Automated tools for generating mapping information for buildings

ABSTRACT

Techniques are described for using computing devices to perform automated operations involved in analysis of images acquired in a defined area, as part of generating mapping information of the defined area for subsequent use (e.g., for controlling navigation of devices, for display on client devices in corresponding GUIs, etc.). The defined area may include an interior of a multi-room building, and the generated information including a floor map of the building, such as from an analysis of multiple 360° spherical panorama images acquired at various viewing locations within the building (e.g., using an image acquisition device with a spherical camera having one or more fisheye lenses to capture a panorama image that extends 360 degrees around a vertical axis)—the generating may be further performed without detailed information about distances from the images&#39; viewing locations to objects in the surrounding building.

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 62/893,108, filed Aug. 28, 2019 and entitled “Automated Tools For Generating Mapping Information For Buildings,” which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The following disclosure relates generally to using automated tools and associated techniques to analyze images acquired in a defined area as part of generating mapping information for the area, such as a floor map for a building interior, as well as subsequently using the generated mapping information in one or more manners.

BACKGROUND

In various fields and circumstances, such as architectural analysis, property inspection, real estate acquisition and development, remodeling and improvement services, general contracting and other circumstances, it may be desirable to view information about the interior of a house, office, or other building without having to physically travel to and enter the building, including to determine actual as-built information about the building rather than design information from before the building is constructed. However, it can be difficult or impossible to effectively display visual information about building interiors to users at remote locations, such as to enable a user to fully understand the layout and other details of the interior.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIGS. 1A-1B are diagrams depicting an exemplary building interior environment and computing system(s) for use in embodiments of the present disclosure, including to generate and present information representing the building interior.

FIGS. 2A-2W illustrate examples of automated operations for participating in analysis of images and generation of a floor map for a building.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram illustrating computing systems suitable for executing embodiments of one or more systems that perform at least some of the techniques described in the present disclosure.

FIG. 4 illustrates an example embodiment of a flow diagram for an Image Capture and Analysis (ICA) system routine in accordance with an embodiment of the present disclosure.

FIGS. 5A-5C illustrate an example embodiment of a flow diagram for a Mapping Information Generation Manager (MIGM) system routine in accordance with an embodiment of the present disclosure.

FIG. 6 illustrates an example embodiment of a flow diagram for a Building Map Viewer system routine in accordance with an embodiment of the present disclosure.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The present disclosure describes techniques for using one or more computing devices to perform automated operations related to analysis of images acquired in a defined area, as part of generating mapping information of the defined area for subsequent use in one or more further automated manners. In at least some embodiments, the defined area includes an interior of a multi-room building (e.g., a house, office, etc.), and the generated information includes a floor map of the building, such as a 2D (two-dimensional) overhead view (e.g., an orthographic top view) of a schematic floor map that is generated from an analysis of multiple 360° spherical panorama images acquired at various viewing locations within the building (e.g., using an image acquisition device with a spherical camera having one or more fisheye lenses to capture a panorama image that extends 360 degrees horizontally around a vertical axis)—in at least some such embodiments, the generating of the mapping information is further performed without having or using information acquired from depth-sensing equipment about distances from the images' viewing locations to walls or other objects in the surrounding building interior. The generated floor map and/or other generated mapping-related information may be further used in one or more manners in various embodiments, such as for controlling navigation of mobile devices (e.g., autonomous vehicles), for display on one or more client devices in corresponding GUIs (graphical user interfaces), etc. Additional details are included below regarding the automated operations of the computing device(s) involved in the generating of the mapping information, and some or all of the techniques described herein may, in at least some embodiments, be performed at least in part via automated operations of a Mapping Information Generation Manager (“MIGM”) system, as discussed further below.

In addition, the automated operations of the computing device(s) may in some embodiments and situations include interacting with one or more MIGM system operator users who assist with the analysis of the images and the generating of the mapping information, such as by displaying one or more GUIs that show information related to the images and/or that show associated mapping information being generated, and receiving and further using input submitted by the user(s) via the GUI(s) as part of the mapping information generation. As one non-exclusive example, one or more MIGM system operator users may, in at least some embodiments, manipulate information overlaid on a displayed acquired image of a room and/or a generated shape of the room (e.g., a 2D overhead floor map) in order to identify structural and other visual features of the room in which the image was acquired, such as to identify one or more of the following: borders between adjacent walls; borders between walls and a floor; borders between walls and a ceiling; windows and/or sky-lights; passages into and/or out of the room, such as doors and other openings in walls, stairs, etc.; other structures (e.g., represented as cuboid shapes), such as countertops, bath tubs, sinks, fireplaces, and furniture; etc. As another non-exclusive example, one or more MIGM system operator users may, in at least some embodiments, manipulate information overlaid on a displayed acquired image of a room and/or a generated shape of the room in order to determine a position within the room at which the image was acquired, such as by specifying one or more of the following: vertical lines on walls in the room image and corresponding locations on the associated room shape; horizontal lines on walls in the room image (or curved lines on an equirectangular projection that represent horizontal lines in the room) and corresponding lines on the associated room shape; etc. As another non-exclusive example, one or more MIGM system operator users may, in at least some embodiments, manipulate information overlaid on two or more displayed acquired images of two or more rooms and/or on generated shapes of the rooms in order to connect the rooms via one or more shared inter-room passages (e.g., doors and/or other openings between the rooms) and define a layout of the room shapes relative to each other in which the shared inter-room passages are connected, such as by specifying one or more of the following: for each of at least two rooms having an inter-room passage between them, the portion of an image of the room that defines that inter-room passage within that room; for an inter-room passage between at least two rooms, the corresponding locations in the associated room shapes at which the inter-room passage is located; for multiple 360° panorama images acquired within a single room, the room shape for the room based on a combination information from all of those images in order to increase precision of the resulting generated room shape (and thus improve resulting precision of layout information for that room and an adjacent room); etc. After multiple 360° spherical panorama images (and optionally other images) are acquired for a building interior (and optionally an exterior of the building), and room shapes and inter-room passages are determined for some or all of those panorama images, the generation of a floor map for the building and optionally other mapping information for the building may include using the inter-room passage information and other information to determine relative global positions of the associated room shapes to each other in a common coordinate system or other common frame of reference (e.g., without knowing the actual measurements of the rooms). In addition, if distance scaling information is available for one or more of the images, corresponding distance measurements may be determined, such as to allow room sizes and other distances to be determined and further used for the generated floor map. Additional details are included below regarding automated operations of computing device(s) implementing an MIGM system as part of interacting with MIGM system operator user(s), as well as in performing additional automated analyses that are based at least in part on information received from the user(s).

In at least some embodiments and situations, some or all of the images acquired for a building are 360° spherical panorama images that are each acquired at one of multiple viewing locations in or around the building, such as with each panorama image covering 360 degrees horizontally around a vertical axis, and being provided in a format using an equirectangular projection in which straight vertical data (e.g., the sides of a typical rectangular door frame) in the room remains straight in the image and in which straight horizontal data (e.g., the top of a typical rectangular door frame) in the room remains straight in the image if it is shown at a horizontal midline of the image but is increasingly curved in the image in a convex manner relative to the horizontal midline as the distance increases in the image from the horizontal midline. It will be appreciated that such a 360° spherical panorama image may in some situations be represented in a spherical coordinate system and cover up to 360° around a vertical axis, such that a user viewing such a panorama image may move the viewing direction within the panorama image to different orientations to cause different subset images (or “views”) to be rendered within the panorama image (including, if the panorama image is represented in a spherical coordinate system, to convert the image being rendered into a planar coordinate system, such as for a perspective image view before it is displayed). Furthermore, acquisition metadata regarding the capture of such panorama images may be obtained and used in various manners, such as data acquired from IMU (inertial measurement unit) sensors or other sensors of a mobile image acquisition device as it is carried by a user or otherwise moved between viewing locations. In addition, images acquired for a building may further include one or more non-spherical images acquired in one or more rooms in at least some embodiments, such as perspective images in a rectilinear format in which horizontal and vertical straight lines in the room remain straight in the perspective images. Additional details are included below regarding automated operations of device(s) implementing an Image Capture and Analysis (ICA) system involved in acquiring images and optionally acquisition metadata, as well as in optionally performing preprocessing of the images before later use (e.g., to render 360° spherical panorama images in an equirectangular format).

In some embodiments, one or more types of additional processing may be further performed, such as to determine additional mapping-related information for a generated floor map or to otherwise associate additional information with a generated floor map. As one example, one or more types of additional information about a building may be received and associated with the floor map (e.g., with particular locations in the floor map), such as additional images, textual and/or audio annotations or other descriptions of particular rooms or other locations, other audio information, such as recordings of ambient noise; overall dimension information, etc. As another example, in at least some embodiments, additional processing of images is performed to determine estimated distance information of one or more types, such as to measure sizes in images of objects of known size, and use such information to estimate room width, length and/or height dimensions. Such estimated size information for one or more rooms may be associated with the floor map, stored and optionally displayed—if the size information is generated for all rooms within a sufficient degree of accuracy, a more detailed floor plan of the building may further be generated, such as with sufficient detail to allow blueprints or other architectural plans to be generated. In addition, if estimated size information includes height information from floors to ceilings, a 3D (three-dimensional) model (e.g., with full height information represented) and/or 2.5D (two-and-a-half dimensional) model (e.g., with partial representations of height shown) of some or all of the 2D (two-dimensional) floor map may be created (optionally with information from in-room images projected on the walls of the models), associated with the floor map, stored and optionally displayed. Other types of additional information may be generated or retrieved and used in some embodiments, such as to determine a geographical alignment (e.g., with respect to true north or magnetic north) for a building and/or geographical location (e.g., with respect to latitude and longitude, or GPS coordinates) for a building, and to optionally include corresponding information on its generated floor map and/or other generated mapping-related information, and/or to optionally further align the floor map or other generated mapping-related information with other associated external information (e.g., satellite or other external images of the building, including street-level images to provide a ‘street view’ of the building; information for an area in which the building is located, such as nearby street maps and/or points of interest; etc.). Other information about the building may also be retrieved from, for example, one or more external sources (e.g., online databases, ‘crowd-sourced’ information provided by one or more end users, etc.), and associated with and linked to the floor map and/or to particular locations within the floor map—such additional information may further include, for example, exterior dimensions and/or shape of the building, additional images and/or annotation information acquired corresponding to particular locations within the building (optionally for locations different from viewing locations of the acquired panorama or other images), etc. Such generated floor maps and optionally additional associated information may further be used in various manners, as discussed elsewhere herein.

The described techniques provide various benefits in various embodiments, including to allow floor maps of multi-room buildings and other structures to be generated from images acquired in the buildings or other structures via automated operations of one or more computing systems (including in some embodiments to perform automated operations to interact with one or more users to obtain one or more types of user-supplied input that is used for further automated analysis), including without having or using detailed information about distances from images' viewing locations to walls or other objects in a surrounding building or other structure. Furthermore, such automated techniques allow such a floor map to be generated much more quickly than previously existing techniques, and in at least some embodiments with greater accuracy, based at least in part on using information acquired from the actual building environment (rather than from plans on how the building should theoretically be constructed), including based on using 360° spherical panorama images in an equirectangular format that display an entire room and allow efficient user identification of elements of interest in the room, as well as enabling the capture of changes to structural elements that occur after a building is initially constructed. Such described techniques further provide benefits in allowing improved automated navigation of a building by mobile devices (e.g., semi-autonomous or fully-autonomous vehicles), including to significantly reduce their computing power used and time used to attempt to otherwise learn a building's layout. In addition, in some embodiments the described techniques may be used to provide an improved GUI in which an end user may more accurately and quickly obtain information about a building's interior (e.g., for use in navigating that interior, such as via a virtual tour), including in response to search requests, as part of providing personalized information to the end user, as part of providing value estimates and/or other information about a building to an end user, etc. Various other benefits are also provided by the described techniques, some of which are further described elsewhere herein.

For illustrative purposes, some embodiments are described below in which specific types of information are acquired, used and/or presented in specific ways for specific types of structures and by using specific types of devices—however, it will be understood that the described techniques may be used in other manners in other embodiments, and that the invention is thus not limited to the exemplary details provided. As one non-exclusive example, while floor maps may be generated for houses that do not include detailed measurements for particular rooms or for the overall houses, it will be appreciated that other types of floor maps or other mapping information may be similarly generated in other embodiments, including for buildings (or other structures or layouts) separate from houses. As another example, while floor maps for houses or other buildings may be used for display to assist viewers in navigating the buildings, generated mapping information may be used in other manners in other embodiments. In addition, the term “building” refers herein to any partially or fully enclosed structure, typically but not necessarily encompassing one or more rooms that visually or otherwise divide the interior space of the structure—non-limiting examples of such buildings include houses, apartment buildings or individual apartments therein, condominiums, office buildings, commercial buildings or other wholesale and retail structures (e.g., shopping malls, department stores, warehouses, etc.), etc. The term “acquire” or “capture” as used herein with reference to a building interior, viewing location, or other location (unless context clearly indicates otherwise) may refer to any recording, storage, or logging of media, sensor data, and/or other information related to spatial and/or visual characteristics of the building interior or subsets thereof, such as by a recording device or by another device that receives information from the recording device. In addition, various details are provided in the drawings and text for exemplary purposes, but are not intended to limit the scope of the invention. For example, sizes and relative positions of elements in the drawings are not necessarily drawn to scale, with some details omitted and/or provided with greater prominence (e.g., via size and positioning) to enhance legibility and/or clarity. Furthermore, identical reference numbers may be used in the drawings to identify similar elements or acts.

FIG. 1A is an example block diagram of various computing devices and systems that may participate in the described techniques in some embodiments. In particular, one or more 360° spherical panorama images 165 in equirectangular format have been generated by an Interior Capture and Analysis (“ICA”) system (e.g., a system 160 that is executing on one or more server computing systems 180, and/or a system provided by application 155 executing on one or more mobile image acquisition devices 185), such as with respect to one or more buildings or other structures—FIG. 1B shows one example of acquisition of such panorama images for a particular house at multiple viewing locations 210, and FIGS. 2A-2W illustrate additional details about using such panorama images to generated an associated floor map, as discussed further below. An MIGM (Mapping Information Generation Manager) system 140 is further executing on one or more server computing systems to generate and provide building floor maps 145 and/or other mapping-related information (not shown) based on use of the panorama images 165 and optionally additional associated information, as well as by using supporting information supplied by MIGM system operator users via computing devices 105 and intervening computer network(s) 170—additional details related to the automated operation of the MIGM system are included elsewhere herein, including with respect to FIGS. 2A-2W and 5A-5C. In some embodiments, the ICA system(s) and MIGM system 140 may execute on the same server computing system(s), such as if both systems are operated by a single entity or are otherwise executed in coordination with each other (e.g., with some or all functionality of both systems integrated together into a larger system), while in other embodiments the MIGM system may instead operate without an ICA system and instead obtain panorama images (or other images) from one or more external sources and optionally store them locally (not shown) with the MIGM system for further analysis and use.

Various components of the mobile image acquisition device 185 are illustrated in FIG. 1A, including a browser 162 and/or an ICA system application 155 that are executed in memory 152 of the device 185 by one or more hardware processors 132, and including one or more imaging systems 135 to acquire visual data. The illustrated embodiment of mobile device 185 further includes one or more sensor modules 148 that include a gyroscope 148 a, accelerometer 148 b and compass 148 c in this example (e.g., as part of one or more IMU units, not shown separately, on the mobile device), optionally a GPS (or Global Positioning System) sensor or other position determination sensor (not shown in this example), a display system 142, etc. Other computing devices/systems 105, 175 and 180 may include various hardware components and stored information in a manner analogous to mobile device 185, which are not shown in this example for the sake of brevity, and as discussed in greater detail below with respect to FIG. 3.

In the example of FIG. 1A, the ICA system may perform automated operations involved in generating multiple 360° spherical panorama images at multiple associated viewing locations (e.g., in multiple rooms or other locations within a building or other structure and optionally around some or all of the exterior of the building or other structure), such as using visual data acquired via the mobile device(s) 185, and for use in generating and providing a representation of an interior of the building or other structure. For example, in at least some such embodiments, such techniques may include using one or more mobile devices (e.g., a camera having one or more fisheye lenses and mounted on a rotatable tripod or otherwise having an automated rotation mechanism, a camera having sufficient fisheye lenses to capture 360 degrees horizontally without rotation, a smart phone held and moved by a user, a camera held by or mounted on a user or the user's clothing, etc.) to capture data from a sequence of multiple viewing locations within multiple rooms of a house (or other building), and to optionally further capture data involved in movement or travel between some or all of the viewing locations for use in linking the multiple viewing locations together, but without having distances between the viewing locations being measured or having other measured depth information to objects in an environment around the viewing locations (e.g., without using any depth-sensing sensors). After a viewing location's information is captured, the techniques may include producing a 360° spherical panorama image from that viewing location that shows the surrounding room in an equirectangular format, and then providing the panorama images for subsequent use by the MIGM system. Additional details related to embodiments of a system providing at least some such functionality of an ICA system are included in U.S. Non-Provisional patent application Ser. No. 16/236,187, filed Dec. 28, 2018 and entitled “Automated Control Of Image Acquisition Via Use Of Acquisition Device Sensors”; in U.S. Non-Provisional patent application Ser. No. 16/190,162, filed Nov. 14, 2018 and entitled “Automated Mapping Information Generation From Inter-Connected Images”; and in U.S. Non-Provisional patent application Ser. No. 15/649,434, filed Jul. 13, 2017 and entitled “Connecting And Using Building Interior Data Acquired From Mobile Devices” (which includes disclosure of a BICA system that an example embodiment of an ICA system generally directed to obtaining and using panorama images from within one or more buildings or other structures); each of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.

One or more end users (not shown) of one or more map viewer client computing devices 175 may further interact over computer networks 170 with the MIGM system 140 (and optionally the ICA system 160), such as to obtain, display and interact with a generated floor map. In addition, while not illustrated in FIG. 1A, a floor map (or portion of it) may be linked to or otherwise associated with one or more additional types of information, such as one or more associated and linked images or other associated and linked information, including for a two-dimensional (“2D”) floor map of a building to be linked to or otherwise associated with a separate 2.5D model rendering of the building and/or a 3D model rendering of the building (referred to at times as a “dollhouse view”), etc., and including for a floor map of a multi-story or otherwise multi-level building to have multiple associated sub-floor maps for different stories or levels that are interlinked (e.g., via connecting stairway passages). Accordingly, non-exclusive examples of an end user's interactions with a displayed or otherwise generated 2D floor map of a building may include one or more of the following: to change between a floor map view and a view of a particular image at a viewing location within or near the floor map; to change between a 2D floor map view and a 2.5D or 3D model view that optionally includes images texture-mapped to walls of the displayed model; to change the horizontal and/or vertical viewing direction from which a corresponding subset view of (or portal into) a panorama image is displayed, such as to determine a portion of a panorama image in a 3D spherical coordinate system to which a current user viewing direction is directed, and to render a corresponding planar image that illustrates that portion of the panorama image without the curvature or other distortions present in the original panorama image; etc. Additional details regarding an ILTM system, which is one example embodiment of a system to provide or otherwise support at least some functionality of a building map viewer system and routine as discussed herein, are included in U.S. Non-Provisional patent application Ser. No. 15/950,881, filed Apr. 11, 2018 and entitled “Presenting Image Transition Sequences Between Viewing Locations,” which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. In addition, while not illustrated in FIG. 1A, in some embodiments the client computing devices 175 (or other devices, not shown) may receive and use generated floor maps and/or other generated mapping-related information in additional manners, such as to control or assist automated navigation activities by those devices (e.g., by autonomous vehicles or other devices), whether instead of or in addition to display of the generate information.

In the depicted computing environment of FIG. 1A, the network 170 may be one or more publicly accessible linked networks, possibly operated by various distinct parties, such as the Internet. In other implementations, the network 170 may have other forms, such as to instead be a private network (such as a corporate or university network) that is wholly or partially inaccessible to non-privileged users. In still other implementations, the network 170 may include both private and public networks, with one or more of the private networks having access to and/or from one or more of the public networks. Furthermore, the network 170 may include various types of wired and/or wireless networks and connections in various situations.

FIG. 1B depicts a block diagram of an exemplary building interior environment in which 360° spherical panorama images are generated, for use by the MIGM system to generate and provide a corresponding building floor map, as discussed in greater detail with respect to FIGS. 2A-2W, as well as for use in presenting the panorama images to users. In particular, FIG. 1B illustrates one story of a multi-story building 198 with an interior that was captured at least in part via multiple panorama images, such as by a mobile image acquisition device 185 with image acquisition capabilities as it is moved through the building interior to a sequence of multiple viewing locations 210 (e.g., starting at viewing location 210A, moving to viewing location 210B along travel path 115, etc.). An embodiment of the ICA system (e.g., ICA system 160 on server computing system(s) 180, a copy 155 of some or all of the ICA system executing on the mobile image acquisition device 185, etc.) may automatically perform or assist in the capturing of the data representing the building interior, as well as to further analyze the captured data to generate 360° spherical panorama images with equirectangular projections to provide a visual representation of the building interior. While such a mobile image acquisition device may include various hardware components, such as a camera, one or more sensors (e.g., a gyroscope, an accelerometer, a compass, etc., such as part of one or more IMUs, or inertial measurement units, of the mobile device; an altimeter; light detector; etc.), a GPS receiver, one or more hardware processors, memory, a display, a microphone, etc., the mobile device may not in at least some embodiments have access to or use equipment to measure the depth of objects in the building relative to a location of the mobile device, such that relationships between different panorama images and their viewing locations may be determined in part or in whole based on features in different images, but without using any data from any such depth sensors. In addition, while directional indicator 109 is provided in FIG. 1B for reference of the viewer, the mobile device and/or ICA system may not use such absolute directional information in at least some embodiments, such as to instead determine relative directions and distances between viewing locations 210 without regard to actual geographical positions or directions in such embodiments.

In operation, the mobile image acquisition device 185 arrives at a first viewing location 210A within a first room of the building interior (in this example, in a living room accessible via an external door 190-1), and captures a view of a portion of the building interior that is visible from that viewing location 210A (e.g., some or all of the first room, and optionally small portions of one or more other adjacent or nearby rooms, such as through doors, halls, stairs or other connecting passages from the first room). The view capture may be performed in various manners as discussed herein, and may include a number of objects or other features (e.g., structural details) that may be visible in images captured from the viewing location—in the example of FIG. 1B, such objects or other features include the doorways 190 (including 190-1 and 190-3) and 197 (e.g., with swinging and/or sliding doors), windows 196 (including 196-1, 196-2, 196-3 and 196-4), corners or edges 195 (including corner 195-1 in the northwest corner of the building 198, corner 195-2 in the northeast corner of the first room, corner 195-3 in the southwest corner of the first room, corner 195-4 at the northern edge of the inter-room passage between the first room and a hallway, etc.), furniture 191-193 (e.g., a couch 191; chair 192; table 193; etc.), pictures or paintings or televisions or other hanging objects 194 (such as 194-1 and 194-2) hung on walls, light fixtures, various built-in appliances or fixtures (not shown), etc. The user may also optionally provide a textual or auditory identifier to be associated with a viewing location, such as “living room” for the room including viewing locations 210A and/or 210B, while in other embodiments the ICA system may automatically generate such identifiers (e.g., by automatically analyzing video and/or other recorded information for a building to perform a corresponding automated determination, such as by using machine learning) or the MIGM system may determine such identifiers (e.g., based at least in part on input from MIGM system operator users) or the identifiers may not be used.

After the first viewing location 210A has been adequately captured, the mobile device 185 may move or be moved to a next viewing location (such as viewing location 210B), optionally recording video and/or other data from the hardware components (e.g., from one or more IMUs, from the camera, etc.) during movement between the viewing locations. At the next viewing location, the mobile device may similarly capture a 360° spherical panorama image from that viewing location. This process may repeat for some or all rooms of the building and optionally external to the building, as illustrated for viewing locations 210C-210J in this example. The acquired panorama images for each viewing location may be further analyzed, including in some embodiments to render or otherwise place each panorama image in an equirectangular format, whether at the time of image capture or later.

Various details are provided with respect to FIGS. 1A-1B, but it will be appreciated that the provided details are non-exclusive examples included for illustrative purposes, and other embodiments may be performed in other manners without some or all such details.

FIGS. 2A-2W illustrate examples of generating and presenting a floor map for a building using 360° spherical panorama images of the building interior that are in equirectangular format, such as for the building 198 and panorama images' viewing locations 210 discussed in FIG. 1B.

In particular, FIG. 2A illustrates an example image 250 a, such as a perspective image taken in a northeasterly direction from viewing location 210B in the living room of house 198 of FIG. 1B (or a northeasterly facing subset view of a 360-degree panorama image taken from that viewing location and formatted in a rectilinear manner)—the directional indicator 109 a is further displayed in this example to illustrate the northeasterly direction in which the image is taken. In the illustrated example, the displayed image includes built-in elements (e.g., light fixture 130 a), furniture (e.g., chair 192-1), two windows 196-1, and a picture 194-1 hanging on the north wall of the living room. No inter-room passages into or out of the living room (e.g., doors or other wall openings) are visible in this image. However, multiple room borders are visible in the image 250 a, including horizontal borders between a visible portion of the north wall of the living room and the living room's ceiling and floor, horizontal borders between a visible portion of the east wall of the living room and the living room's ceiling and floor, and the vertical border 195-2 between the north and east walls.

FIG. 2B continues the example of FIG. 2A, and illustrates an additional perspective image 250 b taken in a northwesterly direction from viewing location 210B in the living room of house 198 of FIG. 1B—the directional indicator 109 b is further displayed to illustrate the northwesterly direction in which the image is taken. In this example image, a small portion of one of the windows 196-1 continues to be visible, along with a portion of window 196-2 and a new lighting fixture 130 b. In addition, horizontal and vertical room borders are visible in image 250 b in a manner similar to that of FIG. 2A.

FIG. 2C continues the examples of FIGS. 2A-2B, and illustrates a third perspective image 250 c taken in a southwesterly direction in the living room of house 198 of FIG. 1B, such as from viewing location 210B or 210A—the directional indicator 109 c is further displayed to illustrate the southwesterly direction in which the image is taken. In this example image, a portion of window 196-2 continues to be visible, as is a couch 191 and visual horizontal and vertical room borders in a manner similar to that of FIGS. 2A and 2B. This example image further illustrates an inter-room passage for the living room, which in this example is a door 190-1 (which FIG. 1B identifies as a door to the exterior of the house). It will be appreciated that a variety of other perspective images may be taken from viewing location 210B and/or other viewing locations and displayed in a similar manner.

FIG. 2D continues the examples of FIGS. 2A-2C, and illustrates a 360° spherical panorama image 250 d (e.g., taken from viewing location 210B), which displays the entire living room in an equirectangular format—since the panorama image does not have a direction in the same manner as the perspective images of FIGS. 2A-2C, the directional indicator 109 is not displayed in FIG. 2D. A portion of the panorama image 250 d which corresponds to the first perspective image 250 a is shown in approximately the center portion of the image 250 d, while the left portion of the image 250 d and the far-right portion of the image 250 d contain visual data corresponding to that of the perspective images 250 b and 250 c. This example panorama image 250 d includes windows 196-1, 196-2 and 196-3, furniture 192-1, 193 and 191, a door 190-1 and an opening to the hallway (with the opening showing part of a door 190-3 visible in the hallway from the viewing location for image 250 d). Image 250 d further illustrates a variety of room borders in a manner similar to that of the perspective images, but with the horizontal borders being displayed in an increasingly curved manner the farther they are from horizontal midline of image—the visible borders include vertical inter-wall borders 195-1, 195-2 and 195-3, vertical border 195-4 at the left side of the hallway opening, vertical borders at the right side of the hallway opening and the southeast corner of the living room, and horizontal borders between the walls and the floor and between the walls and the ceiling.

FIG. 2E continues the examples of FIGS. 2A-2D, and again illustrates the 360° spherical panorama image of the living room from FIG. 2D as part of a first pane 250 e of a GUI being displayed to an MIGM system operator user (not shown), along with user-selectable GUI controls 295 to select different types of functionality, user-manipulatable visual border and corner GUI controls 280 and 285 overlaid on the panorama image in the first GUI pane 250 e in order to specify the room border outline, and a second GUI pane 255 e. The second GUI pane 255 e displays an initial room shape 260 e corresponding to the visual border and corner GUI controls 280 and 285 in the first GUI pane, such that changes to the room shape in the second GUI pane or to the visual border and corner GUI controls 280 and 285 in the first GUI pane cause corresponding changes in the other pane. GUI control 295 a is currently selected, corresponding in this example to displaying the GUI controls 280 and 285 to enable the user to provide room shape definition information for the room visible in the displayed panorama image—it will be appreciated that such GUI controls 295 may be displayed and/or accessed in other manners in other embodiments (e.g., via menus, keyboard selections, etc.).

In this example, the GUI controls 280 and 285 include corner visual representations 280 that represent corners in which multiple borders converge, and border visual representations 285 that represent borders between walls and the ceiling and between walls and the floor. After the corner and border visual representations are displayed in the GUI, the user is able to manipulate the visual representations to match corresponding features of the room that are visible in the underlying panorama image, as illustrated in further detail with respect to FIG. 2F. In particular, FIG. 2F further illustrates that the corner visual representation 280B is to be moved 275 b (e.g., dragged by the user) to a target location 290 b, and the corner visual representation 280 a is to be moved 275 a (e.g., dragged by the user) to the target location 290 a, with similar movements 275 c and 275 d to be made by the user for the corner visual representations 280 c and 280 d corresponding to the northwest room corner's floor and ceiling, respectively, and with further corresponding adjustments (not shown) to be made by the user for the other corner visual representations 280 and/or border visual representations 285, etc. In some embodiments, the target locations 290 are not visibly displayed in the GUI, with the user instead selecting the appropriate locations in the displayed image that correspond to the locations of interest in the room. In other embodiments, the MIGM system may perform automated operations to determine candidate corner locations for such target locations (e.g., likely corner locations based on image analysis, such as using machine learning techniques), and if so the GUI may visually indicate them to the user (such as in the manner shown in FIG. 2F) and/or allow the user to snap a visual corner representation 280 to the nearest corresponding determined candidate corner location (or otherwise to a most appropriate determined candidate corner location). As visual corner representation 280 a is moved to the location 290 a, the visual border representations attached to that corner representation will similarly move toward the actual corresponding border, as illustrated in FIG. 2G, and other visual corner and/or border representations may similarly shift (e.g., in smaller amounts). In other embodiments and situations, the user may instead move a visual border representation to a corresponding actual border, and the visual corner representations attached to such visual border representations will similarly move toward their actual corresponding corners. Additional visual corner representation 290 e illustrates, however, that some corners and/or borders in the room may be partially or fully obscured in the panorama image, such as in this case by the chair in the corner—if so, the user may nonetheless closely fit the visual border and corner representations to the obscured areas (e.g., by fitting the visual representations for other nearby unobscured parts of the borders and/or corners, with the visual representations for the obscured areas being dragged to their correct locations despite being obscured), although the MIGM system may not determine candidate locations for borders and/or corners that are sufficiently obscured to prevent corresponding image analysis (e.g., fully obscured). In addition, as the visual corner and/or border representations are moved in the first GUI pane 250 f, the current room shape 260 f in the second GUI pane 255F is updated accordingly, such as to have a portion 262 f of the room shape be modified as corresponding portions of the visual border and corner representations along the west wall of the living room are modified.

FIG. 2G continues the examples of FIGS. 2A-2F, and illustrates a point in time after the visual corner and border representations for the west wall of the living room have been specified by the user to match the corresponding features in the image (e.g., based on the visual corner representations 280 a-d being fitted to their corresponding room corners shown in the image. At this point in time, after the visual corner and border representations for the west wall of the living room were moved, portions of the other visual corner and border representations for other parts of the living room have similarly been adjusted, such as for visual corner representation 280 e to have been adjusted 277 e from its previous position 276 e to a current position 278 e, for visual corner representation 280 f to have been adjusted 277 f from its previous position 276 f to a current position 278 f, and for at least some of the visual border representations (e.g., those between visual corner representations 280 d and 280 f, those between visual corner representations 280 c and 280 e, etc.). In addition, since the visual corner and border representations for the other walls of the living room have not yet been fully fitted to their corresponding room borders and corners by the user, the current room shape 260 g in the second GUI pane 255 g is no longer a rectangle, as the current modified dimensions of the west wall (as defined by its fitted visual corner and border representations) are shorter than the current dimensions for the east wall (as defined by its not fully fitted visual corner and border representations). Accordingly, the user continues to perform manipulations in FIG. 2G to move the visual corner and border representations for the remaining walls of the room, such as to further move 275 e the visual corner representation 280 e from its current location 278 e to its target location of 290 e (e.g., via dragging and/or snapping), and to further move 275 f the visual corner representation 280 f from its current location 278 f to its target location of 290 f (e.g., via dragging and/or snapping). As such further user manipulations are performed in the first GUI pane 250 g, corresponding changes will be made to the defined room shape 260 g in the second GUI pane 255 g, although the results of those corresponding changes are not shown in the example of FIG. 2G.

FIG. 2H continues the examples of FIGS. 2A-2G, and illustrates a later point in time after all of the visual corner and border representations overlaid on the panorama image have been fitted to corresponding features of the room as shown in the panorama image. The resulting room shape 260 h in the second GUI pane 255 h is similarly updated. It will be appreciated that distortions in the panorama image and/or imprecise placement by the user of the visual border and corner representations may cause the resulting room shape 260 h to not be exact in some situations (e.g., not be completely rectangular, even if the corresponding room actually is), such as is illustrated with initial room shape variant 249 in the room shape (corresponding to the southeasterly corner of the living room)—if so, adjustments 248 may be made to correct such imperfections, whether on the room shape in the second GUI pane 255 h or on the visual corner and border representations overlaid on the panorama image in the first GUI pane 250 h, whether manually by the user or automatically by the MIGM system, and whether immediately after the room shape is defined or instead during later processing. For example, the MIGM system may in some embodiments perform automated operations to apply shape constraints and/or optimizations to the initial user-defined room shape (e.g., the version with variant 249), such as to enforce presumptions for factors such as straight walls and 90° corners (such that adjacent walls are perpendicular, and opposing walls are parallel). After any final adjustments have been made, the specification of the room shape for the living room is defined. in addition, while such room shape determination activities are not illustrated for other rooms of the house 198, it will be appreciated that such further room shape determination activities may be performed for some or all rooms of the house.

FIG. 2I continues the examples of FIGS. 2A-2H, and illustrates additional user manipulations that may be performed to identify elements of interest in the living room, such as to identify inter-room doors in FIG. 2I (e.g., corresponding to selection of GUI control 295 b). In this example, a user-manipulatable visual door representation 261 a is overlaid on the panorama image shown in the first GUI pane 250 i, and the user manipulates the location of the visual door representation to be placed over the actual door 190-1 shown in the panorama image, optionally modifying the size of the visual door representation (e.g., width and/or height) to match the door size if needed. In some embodiments, the location and size of the visual door representation are fully specified by the user, while in other embodiments the MIGM system may perform automated operations to identify location and/or size of one or more candidate doors in the panorama image (e.g., likely doors based on image analysis, such as using machine learning techniques), and if so the initially displayed visual door representation 261 a may use such automatically determined candidate door location and size information for its initial placement. As the user manipulates the visual door representation in the first GUI pane 250 i, a corresponding visual door indicator 261 a is added to and modified in the room shape 260 i shown in the second GUI pane 255 i. As with the previously discussed visual border and corner representations, the user may also directly modify the visual door indicator 261 a in the second GUI pane 255 i (e.g., to modify its size and/or location in the room shape 260 i), whether instead of or in addition to modifying the visual door representation 261 a in the first GUI pane, and if so the visual door representation 261 a in the first GUI pane is modified accordingly.

FIG. 2J continues the examples of FIGS. 2A-2I, and illustrates additional user manipulations that may be performed to identify other elements of interest in the living room, such as to identify windows in the room (e.g., corresponding to selection of GUI control 295 c). In the example of FIG. 2J, multiple user-manipulatable visual window representations 262 are overlaid on the panorama image shown in the first GUI pane 250 j (whether sequentially or simultaneously), and the user manipulates the location of the visual window representations to be placed over the actual windows shown in the image, optionally modifying the size of the visual window representations (e.g., width and/or height) to match the actual window sizes in the room if needed. In some embodiments, the location and size of one or more of the visual window representations are fully specified by the user, while in other embodiments the MIGM system may perform automated operations to identify candidate window location and size in the panorama image (e.g., likely windows based on image analysis, such as using machine learning techniques), and if so the initially displayed visual window representations may use such automatically determined candidate window location and size information for their initial placements. As the user manipulates the visual window representations in the first GUI pane 250 j, corresponding visual window indicators 262 are added to and modified in the room shape 260 j in the second GUI pane 255 j. As with the previously discussed visual door representations, the user may also directly modify the visual window indicators 262 in the second GUI pane 255 j (e.g., to modify their size and/or location in the room shape 260 j), whether instead of or in addition to modifying the visual window representations 262 in the first GUI pane, and if so the visual window representations 262 in the first GUI pane are modified accordingly.

FIG. 2K continues the examples of FIGS. 2A-2J, and illustrates additional user manipulations that may be performed to identify other elements of interest in the living room, such as to identify inter-room openings in or out of the room (e.g., corresponding to selection of GUI control 295 d). In the example of FIG. 2K, a user-manipulatable visual opening representation 263 a is overlaid on the panorama image shown in the first GUI pane 250 k, and the user manipulates the location of the visual opening representation to be placed over the actual opening shown in the image from the living room to the hallway, optionally modifying the size of the visual opening representation (e.g., width and/or height) to match the actual opening size in the room if needed. In some embodiments, the location and size of the visual opening representation is fully specified by the user, while in other embodiments the MIGM system may perform automated operations to identify candidate opening location and size in the panorama image (e.g., likely openings based on image analysis, such as using machine learning techniques), and if so the initially displayed visual opening representation may use such automatically determined candidate opening location and size information for its initial placement. As the user manipulates the visual opening representation in the first GUI pane 250 k, a corresponding visual opening indicator 263 a is added to and modified in the room shape 260 k in the second GUI pane 255 k. As with the previously discussed visual representations, a user may also directly modify the visual opening indicator 263 a in the second GUI pane 255 k (e.g., to modify its size and/or location in the room shape 260 k), whether instead of or in addition to modifying the visual opening representation 263 a of the first GUI pane, and if so the visual opening representation 263 a in the first GUI pane is modified accordingly.

FIG. 2L continues the examples of FIGS. 2A-2K, and illustrates additional user manipulations that may be performed to identify other information of interest in the living room, such as to identify dimension information for the room (e.g., corresponding to selection of GUI control 295 e). In the example of FIG. 2L, one or more user-manipulatable visual dimension representations 294 are overlaid on the panorama image shown in the first GUI pane 250 l, and the user manipulates the location and size of the visual dimension representations to correspond to features of the room that have known or likely sizes, such as the width of a door or window, the height of a door or wall, etc., although it will be appreciated that other types of elements may be used for size information in other embodiments. For example, in at least some embodiments, one or more objects of known size are added to one or more images captured in one or more rooms (e.g., a piece of 8½×11 inch paper laid on a floor of a room; a smart phone with a known pattern visible on its screen, such as a particular model of an iPhone smart phone; etc.), and the additional user manipulations involve identifying one or more aspects of the known-size object(s) (e.g., a location and size of the diagonal of the paper; the pattern on the smart phone screen, along with a determination or other identification of the particular smart phone model in order to retrieve the size of the screen on which the pattern is displayed; etc.), whether in addition to or instead of identifying the location and size of other aspects of the room that were not added for that purpose—such additional user manipulations may include, for example, drawing or placing a line along the diagonal of the paper, or otherwise specifying the portion(s) of the image that correspond to the one or more aspects of the known-size object(s) displayed in the image. In such embodiments, the identifying of the location and size of the known-size object(s) may be further used to determine a camera height for the camera used to capture that image (and thus the camera height for all images if they all use the same camera height). In addition, in some embodiments, dimension information for room features and/or added known-size object(s) is fully specified by the user, while in other embodiments the MIGM system may perform automated operations to identify candidate dimension information for the panorama image (e.g., likely dimensions from image analysis, such as using machine learning), and if so the initially displayed visual dimension representations may use such automatically determined candidate dimension information for their initial placements and sizes. In the example of FIG. 2L, as the user manipulates the visual dimension representations in the first GUI pane 250 l, corresponding dimension information 269 is added to and modified for the room shape 260 l in the second GUI pane 255 l, such as to specify overall dimensions of the room. As with the previously discussed visual representations, a user may also directly modify the dimension information 269 in the second GUI pane 255 l, whether instead of or in addition to modifying the visual dimension representations 294 of the first GUI pane.

FIG. 2M continues the examples of FIGS. 2A-2L, and illustrates additional user manipulations that may be performed in the GUI to identify other information of interest for the living room, such as to determine the position within the room from which an image was taken (e.g., corresponding to selection of GUI control 295 f). In the example of FIG. 2M, a perspective image is shown in a third GUI pane 250 m, with three user-manipulatable visual vertical representations 246 a-246 c shown, and with two user-manipulatable visual horizontal representations 247 a and 247 b shown. The user manipulates the location of the visual vertical and horizontal representations to correspond to identifiable locations in the living room for vertical and horizontal surfaces, respectively, such as to position the visual vertical representations in the northeast and northwest corners and at the left edge of the windows 196-1, and to position the visual horizontal representations along the north wall and the west wall of the room along surfaces known or believed to be horizontal (e.g., bottoms or tops of windows or doors). As the user manipulates the visual vertical and horizontal representations in the first pane, corresponding visual indicators are added to and modified for the room shape 260 m of the fourth GUI pane 255 m, such as to show the corresponding locations and features in the room shape for those visual representations in the first GUI pane. As with other previously discussed visual representations, a user may also directly modify the visual indicators in the room shape 260 m of the second pane 255 m, whether instead of or in addition to modifying the visual representations in the first GUI pane.

In the illustrated example of FIG. 2M, an additional 360° spherical panorama image 245 m is also displayed for the purpose of explanation (e.g., for potential display in the third GUI pane 250 m, such as before or after display of the perspective image), although in some embodiments only a single image may be shown at one time while doing image position determination. In this example, the panorama image is able to be manipulated by the user in a similar manner to that of the perspective image, including to position three user-manipulatable visual vertical representations 244 in the panorama image. However, the horizontal representations used for the perspective image are not used for the panorama image, since the distance from the image's viewing location to the walls may be determined based at least in part on the size of the walls and their amount of curvature, rather than on the degree of the angle between the visual horizontal representations on adjacent walls in the perspective image. While a fourth GUI pane with a corresponding room shape is not shown for the panorama image, it will be appreciated that if the panorama image is shown in the third GUI pane in place of the perspective image, the room shape information in the fourth GUI pane will correspond to the panorama image and will be manipulated in a similar manner to that described for the perspective image. In other embodiments, other types of user manipulations may be performed to determine the position of an image's viewing location. In addition, in some embodiments, the MIGM system may perform automated operations to determine a candidate position of an image's viewing location (e.g., a likely position based on analysis of features in image, such as using machine learning techniques), and if so the determined candidate viewing location position may instead be used for initial placement of visual vertical and/or horizontal representations.

FIGS. 2N-2Q illustrate further user manipulations to specify layout information for multiple room shapes (e.g., corresponding to selection of GUI control 295 g), such as after the room shape determination process has been performed for all of the rooms of the house 198. In particular, FIG. 2N continues the examples of FIGS. 2A-2M, and includes two image display panes (a fifth GUI pane 250 n, and a sixth GUI pane 245 n), and a corresponding seventh GUI pane 255 n with room shape layout information. In the example of FIG. 2N, the fifth GUI pane displays the 360° spherical panorama image for the living room, while the sixth GUI pane displays a 360° spherical panorama image for the hallway connected to the living room (as well as to other rooms, as shown in FIG. 1B). In this example, the living room and hallway share an inter-room opening 263 a, with that opening being identified for reference purposes in the living room in the fifth GUI pane and in the hallway in the sixth GUI pane, and to be subsequently inter-connected by the user as being part of the same opening. The seventh GUI pane shows room shapes 239 and 238 corresponding to the living room and hallway, respectively, with information about inter-room doors and openings as previously specified for the living room and hallway during the room shape determination process—since information to specify the room layout has not yet been specified by the user, the two room shapes are shown separately from each other.

FIG. 2O continues the examples of FIGS. 2A-2N, and illustrates additional user manipulations that may be performed in the GUI to specify relative room layout information for the two rooms. In particular, user-manipulatable matching visual opening representations 221 are displayed on both panorama images in the fifth and sixth GUI portions of FIG. 2O, and the user proceeds to associate those opening representations 221 to the inter-room passage 263 a illustrated in FIG. 2N. As the size and location of the openings may have previously been specified for the living room and hallway during the room shape determination process, the user may not need to manipulate the visual representations 221 in FIG. 2O, but is able to do so as needed. As the user specifies the connection between the openings in the living room and the hallway as being the same inter-room passage, the locations of the corresponding room shapes 239 and 238 are adjusted in the seventh GUI pane 255 o to be connected at the locations of that inter-room passage, with the room shapes being rotated and/or moved as needed to connect those locations in the two rooms. As illustrated in the example of the seventh GUI pane of FIG. 2O, however, the initial relative layout of the room shapes may not be precisely aligned at first, such as with room shape 239 being at a slight angle relative to that of room 238 (e.g., due to imperfections in the locations and/or connections of the inter-room openings). While such layout problems may be immediately adjusted by the user and/or by the MIGM system in an automated manner (e.g., by applying layout constraints and/or optimizations, such as that room shapes connect at parallel walls) in some embodiments and situations, the alignments of the various rooms may also be later adjusted as additional rooms are incrementally added to the overall room layout for the house, as illustrated further with respect to FIG. 2P.

In particular, FIG. 2P continues the examples of FIGS. 2A-2O, and again illustrates the 360° spherical panorama image for the hallway (although this time in the fifth GUI pane 250 p)—however, the sixth GUI pane 245 p in this example newly illustrates the 360° spherical panorama image for an additional bedroom on the south side of the house that connects to the hallway via door 190-3, in order to specify the layout between the hallway and the additional bedroom. In addition, the seventh GUI pane 255 p has been updated to show, in addition to the previous layout of the connected room shapes for the living room and hallway, an additional room shape 237 for the additional bedroom, with the information in the seventh GUI pane corresponding to after the user has made an initial connection between the hallway and the additional bedroom via the door 190-3—however, the incorrect alignment of the room shapes for the living room and the hallway continue to be present in the seventh GUI pane. In particular, the user has already used displayed user-manipulatable visual door representations 222 in the two panorama images to connect the door 190-3 in both images as being part of the same inter-room passage between the hallway and the additional bedroom, with the room shapes in the seventh GUI pane having been updated accordingly. However, in this example the user has made an imprecise specification of the visual representation 222 in the panorama image for the additional bedroom shown in the sixth GUI pane 245 p, with the visual representation 222 being at the west edge of the additional bedroom, and causing the location 222 of the door 190-3 to be incorrect for the room shape 237 in the seventh GUI portion 255 p, resulting in the room shape 237 in the seventh GUI pane 255 p being separated from the living room by a distance that is greater than what is actually present in the house 198.

Automated and/or manual corrections may be made to the incorrect visual representation 222 placement in the panorama image of the additional bedroom and/or the incorrect alignment of the room shapes for the living room and hallway. In this example, a subsequently modified version 256 p of the room layout information is shown in which adjustments have been made to correct both the incorrect initial mapping location of the door 190-3 and the previous imprecise alignment of the living room relative to the hallway—however, it will be appreciated that both information 255 p and 256 p may not be shown simultaneously in at least some embodiments (e.g., instead in a serial manner as the adjustments are made), although both versions are shown in the example for the sake of explanation. Such adjustments to correct the initial imprecisions may be made manually by the user via the GUI in at least some embodiments and situations (e.g., adjusting the visual representation 222 placement in the panorama image of the additional bedroom, adjusting the hallway opening information for the living room and/or hallway, etc.), while in other embodiments and situations the MIGM system may instead perform automated operations to correct the alignment of the three room shapes relative to each other. While not illustrated in these examples, the additional rooms of the house 198 may similarly be incrementally added to the combination of room shape layouts, to produce an initial specification of the layout of all of the rooms.

FIG. 2Q continues the examples of FIGS. 2A-2P, and in particular illustrates one manner for the user to more precisely specify connection information between two rooms for a doorway or opening. In particular, FIG. 2Q illustrates an enlarged portion 250 q of the 360° spherical panorama image for the hallway, with the door 190-3 being shown in additional detail. In this example, additional information is specified to represent the doorway from both the side of the hallway 244 a and the side of the room 224 b, with the difference 223 corresponding to the width of the wall in this example. In particular, the user may manipulate visual representations 224 a and 224 b of the door (and of additional portions of the hallway and additional bedroom, not shown) to match the room borders for the hallway and for the additional bedroom in this image, and such wall width information may be further used in the room layout information to specify a corresponding width of the walls between the hallway and the additional bedroom. Similar information can be specified for other doors and inter-room openings, with corresponding wall width being determined and also used in a similar manner for the combination of room shape layouts.

FIG. 2R continues the examples of FIGS. 2A-2Q, and in particular illustrates one manner for the user to more precisely specify inter-room connection information for a doorway or opening between two rooms. In particular, FIG. 2R illustrates an enlarged portion 250 r of the 360° spherical panorama image for the additional bedroom previously illustrated in pane 245 p of FIG. 2P, but with the door 190-3 being removed to provide further clarity, and a portion of the hallway being present through the doorway from the additional bedroom (including wall-to-floor and wall-to ceiling borders 226 on the north side of the hallway). In this example, as part of specifying the border for the adjacent room (in this example, the hallway) in a manner similar to that shown in FIG. 2Q with respect to border 224 b, an outline 224 c of the adjacent room is shown (e.g., all parts of the adjacent room that would be visible in portion 250 r of the image if the walls of the additional bedroom were not present), the user may manipulate the visual representations 224 c of the adjacent room to match the borders 226 of the hallway that are visible, in order to determine a more precise fit. In a manner similar to FIG. 2Q, wall width information may be further determined and used, but is not illustrated in this example.

After all of the room shape layout information has been specified and any such wall width information has been determined, the final results may be used to generate a 2D floor map of the house, optionally after final optimizations have been performed and visual aspects of the final floor map have been added—such final optimizations may include, for example, one or more of ensuring consistent visual aspects (e.g., line widths, colors, text styles, etc.), placing textual room labels at preferred locations on the final floor map, adding missing spaces such as small closets or other additional areas not included on the defined room shape layouts (e.g., areas that did not have any images taken from within them, resulting in empty spaces within an exterior of the building that are not identified in the defined room shape layouts), merging multiple overlapping and/or adjacent walls, correcting any geometric anomalies, etc. In at least some embodiments, the described techniques may include performing at least some such updates in an automated manner, and then providing corresponding GUI tools for one or more users to make final manual adjustments (e.g., GUI tools similar to those of a drawing or painting program) to a floor map for the house that is generated. FIG. 2W illustrates one example 230 of such a final 2D floor map for the house 198, such as may be presented to an MIGM system operator user and/or end user in a GUI 255 w, and with various types of information being added to the combination of room shape layouts—it will be appreciated that a 3D or 2.5D floor plan showing wall height information may be similarly generated in some embodiments, whether in addition to or instead of such a 2D floor map. In this example, room labels have been added to some or all rooms (e.g., “living room” for the living room), room dimensions have been added for some or all rooms, visual indications of fixtures or appliances or other built-in features have been added for some or all rooms, visual indications of positions of additional types of associated and linked information have been added (e.g., of panorama images and/or perspective images that an end user may select for further display, of audio annotations and/or sound recordings that an end user may select for further presentation, etc.), visual indications of doors and windows may be shown, etc.—in addition, in at least some embodiments and situations, some or all such types of information may be provided by one or more MIGM system operator users (e.g., to receive textual room labels from those users), such as during activities described with respect to FIGS. 2E-2U or instead at other times. In addition, in this example a user-selectable control 228 is added to indicate a current floor that is displayed for the floor map, and to allow the end user to select a different floor to be displayed—in some embodiments, a change in floors or other levels may also be made directly from the floor map, such as via selection of a connecting passage such as the stairs to floor 2 in the illustrated floor map. It will be appreciated that a variety of other types of information may be added in some embodiments, that some of the illustrated types of information may not be provided in some embodiments, and that visual indications of and user selections of linked and associated information may be displayed and selected in other manners in other embodiments.

FIGS. 2S and 2T continue the examples of FIGS. 2A-2R, and illustrate an alternative embodiment of user-manipulatable visual border and corner GUI controls as shown in FIGS. 2E-2H. In particular, in the example of FIG. 2S, the displayed user-manipulatable GUI controls in the first GUI pane 250 s include not only visual wall-to-floor and wall-to-ceiling border controls 285 s and visual corner controls 280 s in a manner similar to that of FIG. 2E, but also include additional user-manipulatable inter-wall border controls 282 s not shown in FIG. 2E, such as control 282 s 1 corresponding to inter-wall border 284 s 1, control 282 s 2 corresponding to inter-wall border 284 s 2, and other controls 282 s 3-s4 corresponding to other displayed inter-wall borders 284 s 3-s 4, respectively. As in FIGS. 2E-2H, a second GUI pane 255 s is shown with an initial room shape 260 s corresponding to the visual border and corner GUI controls 280, 282 and 285 in the first GUI pane, such that changes to the room shape in the second GUI pane or to the visual border and corner GUI controls 280, 282 and 285 in the first GUI pane cause corresponding changes in the other pane. Some of the details of FIG. 2E are not included again in FIG. 2S for the sake of brevity, such as the GUI controls 295.

FIG. 2T illustrates further initial user manipulations 283 t that are performed in this example embodiment to move the displayed inter-wall border controls 282 to be co-located or otherwise overlapping with the corresponding inter-wall borders 284 s in the displayed image of the room in pane 250 t, such as before manipulating border and corner controls 280 and 285, and by dragging the inter-wall border controls from their initial positions 282 s of FIG. 2S to the new user-specified positions 282 t of FIG. 2T—in this example, the initial pre-manipulation positions 282 s of the displayed inter-wall border controls are shown in FIG. 2T using non-bold dashed lines for the sake of reference, but may not otherwise be visible to the user(s) using the GUI once the displayed inter-wall border controls are manipulated. By adjusting the displayed inter-wall border controls 282 in the illustrated manner, a corresponding resulting room shape 260 t in the pane 255 t of FIG. 2T is modified, such as in this example to have a modified room shape that is closer to an actual rectangular shape of the illustrated room—additional subsequent manipulations (not shown here) of displayed user-manipulatable wall-to-floor and wall-to-ceiling border controls 285 t and corner controls 280 t may be used to further refine the fit of the border and corner controls to the actual borders and corners in the room in a manner similar to that of FIGS. 2F-2H.

As discussed with respect to FIG. 2H and also illustrated in FIG. 2T, a room shape for the illustrated room that results from the user manipulations of the displayed border and corner controls 280, 282 and 285 may not be a perfect fit to the actual shape of the room, such as due to minor variations in locations of manipulated border and corner controls relative to the actual corresponding borders and corners in the image. Accordingly, in at least some embodiments, one or more room shape optimizations may be performed in at least some embodiments after those user manipulations for the room are completed, such as to modify room shape 260 t to a final optimized room shape 260 z in the example of FIG. 2T. Such an optimization process may, in at least some embodiments, include determining if each of the inter-wall connections/corners in the room shape 260 are within a threshold amount of 90° (e.g., within a specified fraction of a degree or 1° or 5° or 10° or 15° or 20° or 25° or 30°, etc.), and if so adjusting each such inter-wall connection/corner to be 90°, resulting in a rectangular room shape if the room has 4 corners. As part of such an adjustment, in order to determine which wall position(s) and/or orientation(s) are to be moved for the room shape optimization process, an assumption may be employed that the inter-wall border locations 282 t specified by the user(s) are correct, with pane 255 t of FIG. 2T further illustrating a capture location 262 t within the room from which the image shown in pane 250 t was taken, and lines 263 t shown corresponding to the angles from that capture location to the inter-wall border locations 282 t as specified by the user(s)—while information 262 t and 263 t is shown in this example for the sake of understanding, in other embodiments such information may not be displayed to the user(s). Given this assumption, and using a resulting combination of a constraint of 90° for each of the inter-wall borders/corners (for this example room) and a constraint of each inter-wall border being along one of the lines 263 t, the final rectangular shape 260 z may be determined that satisfies those constraints and best matches lengths of walls between inter-wall border locations 282 t. As discussed elsewhere, a modification to the displayed room shape in the pane 255 t may cause corresponding changes in pane 250 t to the wall-to-ceiling borders and/or the wall-to-floor borders and/or the corners, although such further modifications to the displayed controls 280 and 285 in pane 250 t corresponding to optimized final room shape 260 z are not illustrated in this example. In one non-exclusive example embodiment, the room shape optimization process is modeled as a non-linear least squares optimization that enforces the following constraints.

Optimize the delta of each depth d from the image capture location to the inter-wall border locations, i.e. the new depths are (1+d) for each unknown depth d:

-   -   The initial position of each vertex is achieved at d=0     -   lower-bound constraints d>−1 are added, so that the room shape         does not flip over.

Optimize the depth of each corner within the threshold amount of 90° (referred to at times herein as a ‘Manhattan corner’) so that those angles become 90 degrees (with the resulting vertices values referred to as the ‘M’ set of Manhattan corners below)

Fix all non-Manhattan corners, i.e. introduce hard constraints on the depth of oblique corners that are not within the threshold amount of 90° (with the resulting values referred to as the ‘V\M’ set below, corresponding to the set of all vertices V minus the set of M Manhattan vertices—the second term in the equation below adds fixed constrains for all non-Manhattan corners, i.e. we want to keep the original positions)

Add small L2 weight decay on the unknown depths, i.e. prefer simpler solutions that don't move the shape too much—the third term in the equation below adds this regularization

Use ‘dot’ in the equation below to be a dot product that also normalizes its input vectors

Use hundreds of iterations of the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm to optimize the objectives, based on the following equation. Σ_(i∈M)dot((1+d _(i))*v _(i)−(1+d _(i−1))*v _(i−1),(1+d _(i+1))*v _(i+1)−(1+d _(i))*v _(i))²+Σ_(i∈V\M)100*d _(i) ²+Σ_(i∈M)0.01*d _(i) ² ,s.t.d _(i)≥−1

FIG. 2U continues the examples of FIGS. 2A-2T, and illustrates another alternative embodiment of user-manipulatable visual border and corner GUI controls as previously shown. In particular, in the example of FIG. 2U, the image shown in pane 250 u is a perspective image of the same room with rectilinear visual representations in both the horizontal and vertical directions, and thus showing only a portion of the room—a corresponding second pane 255 is not illustrated in this example, but could be displayed and used in a manner similar to that discussed for FIGS. 2E-2H and 2S-2T in other embodiments. In the example of FIG. 2U, user-manipulatable GUI border and corner controls 280, 282 and 285 are again shown, but with the wall-to-floor and wall-to-ceiling border controls 285 u being straight lines in this example to correspond to the underlying image format. In a manner similar to that previously discussed, one or more users may manipulate the controls 280 u and/or 282 u and/or 285 u (e.g., by first manipulating the inter-wall border controls 282 u first in a manner similar to FIGS. 2S-2T, by manipulating border controls 280 u and/or corner controls 285 u in a manner similar to FIGS. 2E-2H, etc.) to fit the border and corner controls to the actual borders and corners displayed in the image, and with part of a corresponding room shape (not shown) being determined accordingly. In embodiments such as those shown in FIG. 2U, multiple perspective images of the room may be used to collectively show 360° of horizontal coverage in the room (e.g., to show all inter-wall borders/corners in the room), and thus the user(s) of the GUI may sequentially manipulate displayed visual border and corner controls for each such perspective image in order to fully define the room shape for the room.

FIG. 2V continues the examples of FIGS. 2A-2U, and illustrates additional types of user-manipulations that may be performed in at least some embodiments. In particular, FIG. 2V shows an image 250 v similar to that of FIG. 2U, but in which the underlying room does not have a purely rectangular shape, such as due at least in part to additional walls 289 v shown in the image. In such situations, the initial displayed user-manipulatable border and corner controls 280, 282 and 285 that are provided to the user(s) of the GUI may be similar to those shown in FIG. 2U for such a perspective image (or those shown in FIGS. 2E and 2S for a panorama image in an equirectangular format, such as with four inter-wall borders/corners initially shown), but the user may perform additional manipulations (e.g., using additional user-selectable controls, not shown) to add one or more additional inter-wall borders 287 v and corresponding additional wall-to-floor and wall-to-ceiling borders 286 v and corners 288 v for each of the additional room enclosure elements shown in the image, and to then position them at appropriate locations to correspond to the elements in the image. As part of doing so, initial inter-wall borders may, in at least some embodiments, be assumed to be 90° corners, with the corresponding GUI controls added in positions to reflect the assumption, but with the user(s) of the GUI able to modify the angles of the corners as appropriate. In this manner, room shapes for arbitrarily shaped rooms may be specified via user manipulations of corresponding GUI controls.

Various details have been provided with respect to FIGS. 2A-2W, but it will be appreciated that the provided details are non-exclusive examples included for illustrative purposes, and other embodiments may be performed in other manners without some or all such details.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram illustrating an embodiment of one or more server computing systems 300 executing an implementation of an ICA system 340, and one or more server computing systems 380 executing an implementation of an MIGM system 389—the server computing system(s) and ICA and/or MIGM systems may be implemented using a plurality of hardware components that form electronic circuits suitable for and configured to, when in combined operation, perform at least some of the techniques described herein. In the illustrated embodiment, each server computing system 300 includes one or more hardware central processing units (“CPUs”) or other hardware processors 305, various input/output (“I/O”) components 310, storage 320, and memory 330, with the illustrated I/O components including a display 311, a network connection 312, a computer-readable media drive 313, and other I/O devices 315 (e.g., keyboards, mice or other pointing devices, microphones, speakers, GPS receivers, etc.). Each server computing system 380 may have similar components, although only one or more hardware processors 381, memory 387, storage 385 and I/O components 382 are illustrated for the sake of brevity.

The server computing system(s) 300 and executing ICA system 340, and server computing system(s) 380 and executing MIGM system 389, may communicate with each other and with other computing systems and devices in this illustrated embodiment via one or more networks 399 (e.g., the Internet, one or more cellular telephone networks, etc.), such as to interact with user client computing devices 390 (e.g., used to view floor maps, and optionally associated images and/or other related information), and/or mobile image acquisition devices 360 (e.g., used to acquire panorama images and optionally other information for buildings or other environments to be modeled), and/or optionally other navigable devices 395 that receive and use floor maps and optionally other generated information for navigation purposes (e.g., for use by semi-autonomous or fully autonomous vehicles or other devices). In other embodiments, some of the described functionality may be combined in less computing systems, such as to combine the ICA system 340 and the image acquisition functionality of device(s) 360 in a single system or device, to combine the ICA system 340 and the MIGM system 389 in a single system or device, to combine the ICA system 340 and the MIGM system 389 and the image acquisition functionality of device(s) 360 in a single system or device, etc.

In the illustrated embodiment, an embodiment of the ICA system 340 executes in memory 330 of the server computing system(s) 300 in order to perform at least some of the described techniques, such as by using the processor(s) 305 to execute software instructions of the system 340 in a manner that configures the processor(s) 305 and computing system 300 to perform automated operations that implement those described techniques. The illustrated embodiment of the ICA system may include one or more components, not shown, to each perform portions of the functionality of the ICA system, and the memory may further optionally execute one or more other programs 335—as one specific example, a copy of the MIGM system may execute as one of the other programs 335 in at least some embodiments, such as instead of or in addition to the MIGM system 389 on the server computing system(s) 380. The ICA system 340 may further, during its operation, store and/or retrieve various types of data on storage 320 (e.g., in one or more databases or other data structures), such as various types of user information 322, acquired 360° spherical panorama image information 324 (e.g., for analysis to generate floor maps; to provide to users of client computing devices 390 for display; etc.), optionally generated floor maps and other associated information 326 received from MIGM system 389 (e.g., generated and saved 2.5D and/or 3D models, building and room dimensions for use with associated floor plans, additional images and/or annotation information, etc.) and/or various types of optional additional information 328 (e.g., various analytical information related to presentation or other use of one or more building interiors or other environments captured by an ICA system).

In addition, an embodiment of the MIGM system 389 executes in memory 387 of the server computing system(s) 380 in the illustrated embodiment in order to perform at least some of the described techniques, such as by using the processor(s) 381 to execute software instructions of the system 389 in a manner that configures the processor(s) 381 and computing system 380 to perform automated operations that implement those described techniques. The illustrated embodiment of the MIGM system may include one or more components, not shown, to each perform portions of the functionality of the MIGM system, and the memory may further optionally execute one or more other programs (not shown). The MIGM system 389 may further, during its operation, store and/or retrieve various types of data on storage 385 (e.g., in one or more databases or other data structures), such as generated floor maps and optionally other associated information 386 (e.g., generated and saved 2.5D and/or 3D models, building and room dimensions for use with associated floor plans, additional images and/or annotation information, various analytical information related to presentation or other use of one or more building interiors or other environments, etc.)—while not illustrated in FIG. 3, the MIGM system may further store and use additional types of information, such as about MIGM system operator users, acquired 360° spherical panorama image information to be analyzed, etc.

Some or all of the user client computing devices 390 (e.g., mobile devices), mobile image acquisition devices 360, optional other navigable devices 395 and other computing systems (not shown) may similarly include some or all of the same types of components illustrated for server computing system 300. As one non-limiting example, the mobile image acquisition devices 360 are each shown to include one or more hardware CPU(s) 361, I/O components 362, storage 365, and memory 367, with one or both of a browser and one or more client applications 368 (e.g., an application specific to the MIGM system and/or ICA system) executing within memory 367, such as to participate in communication with the ICA system 340, MIGM system 389 and/or other computing systems—the devices 360 each further include one or more imaging systems 364 and IMU hardware sensors 369, such as for use in acquisition of images and associated movement/travel data of the device 360. While particular components are not illustrated for the other navigable devices 395 or other computing systems 390, it will be appreciated that they may include similar and/or additional components.

It will also be appreciated that computing systems 300 and 380 and the other systems and devices included within FIG. 3 are merely illustrative and are not intended to limit the scope of the present invention. The systems and/or devices may instead each include multiple interacting computing systems or devices, and may be connected to other devices that are not specifically illustrated, including via Bluetooth communication or other direct communication, through one or more networks such as the Internet, via the Web, or via one or more private networks (e.g., mobile communication networks, etc.). More generally, a device or other computing system may comprise any combination of hardware that may interact and perform the described types of functionality, optionally when programmed or otherwise configured with particular software instructions and/or data structures, including without limitation desktop or other computers (e.g., tablets, slates, etc.), database servers, network storage devices and other network devices, smart phones and other cell phones, consumer electronics, wearable devices, digital music player devices, handheld gaming devices, PDAs, wireless phones, Internet appliances, and various other consumer products that include appropriate communication capabilities. In addition, the functionality provided by the illustrated ICA system 340 and/or MIGM system 389 may in some embodiments be distributed in various components, some of the described functionality of the ICA system 340 and/or MIGM system 389 may not be provided, and/or other additional functionality may be provided.

It will also be appreciated that, while various items are illustrated as being stored in memory or on storage while being used, these items or portions of them may be transferred between memory and other storage devices for purposes of memory management and data integrity. Alternatively, in other embodiments some or all of the software components and/or systems may execute in memory on another device and communicate with the illustrated computing systems via inter-computer communication. Thus, in some embodiments, some or all of the described techniques may be performed by hardware means that include one or more processors and/or memory and/or storage when configured by one or more software programs (e.g., by the ICA system 340 executing on server computing systems 300 and/or on devices 360, by the MIGM client software 389 executing on server computing systems 380, etc.) and/or data structures, such as by execution of software instructions of the one or more software programs and/or by storage of such software instructions and/or data structures, and such as to perform algorithms as described in the flow charts and other disclosure herein. Furthermore, in some embodiments, some or all of the systems and/or components may be implemented or provided in other manners, such as by consisting of one or more means that are implemented partially or fully in firmware and/or hardware (e.g., rather than as a means implemented in whole or in part by software instructions that configure a particular CPU or other processor), including, but not limited to, one or more application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), standard integrated circuits, controllers (e.g., by executing appropriate instructions, and including microcontrollers and/or embedded controllers), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs), etc. Some or all of the components, systems and data structures may also be stored (e.g., as software instructions or structured data) on a non-transitory computer-readable storage mediums, such as a hard disk or flash drive or other non-volatile storage device, volatile or non-volatile memory (e.g., RAM or flash RAM), a network storage device, or a portable media article (e.g., a DVD disk, a CD disk, an optical disk, a flash memory device, etc.) to be read by an appropriate drive or via an appropriate connection. The systems, components and data structures may also in some embodiments be transmitted via generated data signals (e.g., as part of a carrier wave or other analog or digital propagated signal) on a variety of computer-readable transmission mediums, including wireless-based and wired/cable-based mediums, and may take a variety of forms (e.g., as part of a single or multiplexed analog signal, or as multiple discrete digital packets or frames). Such computer program products may also take other forms in other embodiments. Accordingly, embodiments of the present disclosure may be practiced with other computer system configurations.

FIG. 4 illustrates an example flow diagram of an embodiment of an ICA System routine 400. The routine may be performed by, for example, the ICA System 160 of FIG. 1A, the ICA System 340 of FIG. 3, and/or the ICA system described with respect to FIGS. 1B-2W and as otherwise described herein, such as to acquire 360° spherical panorama images and/or other images at viewing locations within buildings or other structures, such as for use in subsequent generation of related floor maps and/or other mapping information. While portions of the example routine 400 are discussed with respect to acquiring particular types of images at particular viewing locations, it will be appreciated that this or a similar routine may be used to acquire video or other data (e.g., audio), whether instead of or in addition to such images. In addition, while the illustrated embodiment acquires and uses information from the interior of a target building, it will be appreciated that other embodiments may perform similar techniques for other types of data, including for non-building structures and/or for information external to one or more target buildings of interest. Furthermore, some or all of the routine may be executed on a mobile device used by a user to acquire image information, and/or by a system remote from such a mobile device.

The illustrated embodiment of the routine begins at block 405, where instructions or information are received. At block 410, the routine determines whether the received instructions or information indicate to acquire data representing a building interior, and if not continues to block 490. Otherwise, the routine proceeds to block 412 to receive an indication from a user of a mobile image acquisition device to begin the image acquisition process at a first viewing location. After block 412, the routine proceeds to block 415 in order to perform viewing location image acquisition activities in order to acquire a 360° spherical panorama image for the viewing location in the interior of the target building of interest, such as via one or more fisheye lenses on the mobile device, and such as to provide horizontal coverage of at least 360° around a vertical axis. As one non-exclusive example, the mobile image acquisition device may be a rotating (scanning) panorama camera equipped with a fisheye lens, such as a 180° fisheye giving a full sphere at 360° rotation. The routine may also optionally obtain annotation and/or other information from the user regarding the viewing location and/or the surrounding environment, such as for later use in presentation of information regarding that viewing location and/or surrounding environment.

After block 415 is completed, the routine continues to block 420 to determine if there are more viewing locations at which to acquire images, such as based on corresponding information provided by the user of the mobile device. If so, and when the user is ready to continue the process, the routine continues to block 422 to optionally initiate the capture of linking information (including acceleration data) during movement of the mobile device along a travel path away from the current viewing location and towards a next viewing location within the building interior. As described elsewhere herein, the captured linking information may include additional sensor data (e.g., from one or more IMU, or inertial measurement units, on the mobile device or otherwise carried by the user), as well as additional video information, recorded during such movement. Initiating the capture of such linking information may be performed in response to an explicit indication from a user of the mobile device or based on one or more automated analyses of information recorded from the mobile device. In addition, the routine may further optionally monitor the motion of the mobile device in some embodiments during movement to the next viewing location, and provide one or more guidance cues to the user regarding the motion of the mobile device, quality of the sensor data and/or video information being captured, associated lighting/environmental conditions, advisability of capturing a next viewing location, and any other suitable aspects of capturing the linking information. Similarly, the routine may optionally obtain annotation and/or other information from the user regarding the travel path, such as for later use in presentation of information regarding that travel path or a resulting inter-panorama connection link. In block 424, the routine determines that the mobile device has arrived at the next viewing location (e.g., based on an indication from the user, based on the forward movement of the user stopping for at least a predefined amount of time, etc.), for use as the new current viewing location, and returns to block 415 in order to perform the viewing location image acquisition activities for the new current viewing location.

If it is instead determined in block 420 that there are not any more viewing locations at which to acquire image information for the current building or other structure, the routine proceeds to block 425 to optionally analyze the viewing location information for the building or other structure, such as to identify possible additional coverage (and/or other information) to acquire within the building interior. For example, the ICA system may provide one or more notifications to the user regarding the information acquired during capture of the multiple viewing locations and optionally corresponding linking information, such as if it determines that one or more segments of the recorded information are of insufficient or undesirable quality, or do not appear to provide complete coverage of the building. After block 425, the routine continues to block 435 to optionally preprocess the acquired 360° spherical panorama images before their subsequent use for generating related mapping information, such as to perform an equirectangular projection for each such image, such that straight vertical data (e.g., the sides of a typical rectangular door frame, a typical border between 2 adjacent walls, etc.) remains straight and in which straight horizontal data (e.g., the top of a typical rectangular door frame, border between a wall and a floor, etc.) at a horizontal midline of the image remains straight but is increasingly curved in the equirectangular projection image in a convex manner relative to the horizontal midline as the distance increases in the image from the horizontal midline. In block 477, the images and any associated generated or obtained information is stored for later use. FIGS. 5A-5C illustrate one example of a routine for generating a floor map representation of a building interior from the generated panorama information.

If it is instead determined in block 410 that the instructions or other information recited in block 405 are not to acquire images and other data representing a building interior, the routine continues instead to block 490 to perform any other indicated operations as appropriate, such as any housekeeping tasks, to configure parameters to be used in various operations of the system (e.g., based at least in part on information specified by a user of the system, such as a user of a mobile device who captures one or more building interiors, an operator user of the MIGM system, etc.), to obtain and store other information about users of the system, to respond to requests for generated and stored information, etc.

Following blocks 477 or 490, the routine proceeds to block 495 to determine whether to continue, such as until an explicit indication to terminate is received, or instead only if an explicit indication to continue is received. If it is determined to continue, the routine returns to block 405 to await additional instructions or information, and if not proceeds to step 499 and ends.

FIGS. 5A-5C illustrate an example embodiment of a flow diagram for a Mapping Information Generation Manager (MIGM) System routine 500. The routine may be performed by, for example, execution of the MIGM system 140 of FIG. 1A, the MIGM system 389 of FIG. 3, and/or an MIGM system as described elsewhere herein, such as to generate mapping information for a defined area based at least in part on analysis of images (e.g., 360° spherical panorama images) of the area. In the example of FIGS. 5A-5C, the generated mapping information includes a floor map of a building (e.g., a house), but in other embodiments, other types of mapping information may be generated for other types of buildings and used in other manners, as discussed elsewhere herein.

The illustrated embodiment of the routine begins at block 505, where information or instructions are received. The routine continues to block 510 to determine whether the instructions received in block 505 indicate to generate a floor map for an indicated building, optionally along with other related mapping information or other associated information about the building, and if so the routine continues to perform blocks 515-588 to do so, and otherwise continues to block 590.

In block 515, the routine further determines whether the instructions received in block 505 (or subsequently) indicate to determine a room shape of an indicated room in a building, and if so the routine continues to perform blocks 520-535 to do so, and otherwise continues to block 580. In block 520, the routine receives a selection (e.g., from an operator user of the MIGM system) of a 360° spherical panorama image with an equirectangular projection taken in a room of the building and/or of a room of the building having such a 360° spherical panorama image with an equirectangular projection, and proceeds to use the corresponding panorama image to define a shape of the room—as discussed in greater detail elsewhere herein, in situations in which a room has multiple 360° spherical panorama images, only one image may be analyzed in the described manner in some embodiments, or instead other of the additional images may be subsequently analyzed in other embodiments (e.g., to generate a refined version of the room shape based on a combination of information from multiple such analyzed images). In some embodiments, the routine may further perform automated operations to identify candidate locations of borders (e.g., between adjacent walls, between walls and a ceiling, and/or between walls and a floor) and/or corners in the room (such as via image analysis and using machine learning techniques), and then use that information to guide the room shape determination. The routine proceeds in block 520 to display a GUI (or update a previously displayed GUI) to show the panorama image in a first pane or other first portion of the GUI, while including a second pane or other second portion to show a visual representation of the changing room shape as it is being incrementally defined. The routine further overlays the displayed image with user-manipulatable visual border representations that include user-manipulatable visual corner representations at intersections of multiple such border representations, and in embodiments in which candidate locations of borders and/or corners were automatically determined, may use an initial position of the visual border and/or corner representations to be at those determined candidate locations (or allow the user to manually indicate to snap the visual border and/or corner representations to those determined candidate locations if so desired).

After block 520, the routine continues to block 525 to participate in a series of user interactions with the displayed GUI to define an estimate of the room shape for the room, with the user manipulating the visual border representations overlaid on the panorama image to match the visible borders in the image and/or the user manipulating the visual corner representations overlaid on the panorama image to match the visible corners in the image and/or the user manipulating the changing room shape in the second portion of the GUI to reflect shape of the room. As the user manipulates one or more of the visual border representations in the first GUI portion, visual corner representations in the first GUI portion, and/or the room shape in the second GUI portion, the information in both the first and second portions (e.g., the visual border and corner representations in the first GUI portion and the visual room shape in the second GUI portion) are updated to reflect the user manipulations (e.g., simultaneously with the user manipulations) and show the user changes that are made. Once the user is done, the final room shape in the second GUI portion provides a user-defined estimate of the room shape. As noted elsewhere herein, in some embodiments the routine may further perform one or more types of automated modifications to the user-defined room shape estimate to determine the final defined room shape, while in other embodiments the user-defined room shape estimate may be used as the final defined room shape, with non-exclusive examples of such automated modifications including applying shape constraints to increase the likelihood of having straight walls, perpendicular corners and parallel opposite walls (e.g., using a non-linear least squares solver, to correct the user-defined room shape estimate to include such features if the corresponding initial features in the user-defined room shape estimate are within a defined threshold amount of matching such features, etc.).

After the room shape is defined, the routine continues to block 530 to receive user-supplied information about elements of the room, such as structural elements including windows and passages into and/or out of the room (e.g., stairs, doors and other openings in the walls), and optionally non-structural elements of one or more types (e.g., countertops, bath tubs, sinks, fireplaces, other cuboid shapes, etc.). In particular, user-manipulatable visual representations are overlaid on the image in the first GUI portion for each type of element (e.g., sequentially, such as to first specify any doors, then specify any windows, then specify any non-door openings in the walls in or out of the room, etc.) and corresponding locations are visually shown in the defined room shape in the second GUI portion, and as the user manipulates the visual representations in the image in the first GUI portion and/or the visual location indications in the defined room shape in the second GUI portion to identify the locations and sizes of each element of interest, the visual representations in the first GUI portion and the visual location indications in the second GUI portion are updated to reflect the user manipulations (e.g., simultaneously with the user manipulations). In addition, the user may optionally specify other types of information for the room, such as to specify annotations or other descriptive information to be associated with the room or with particular locations in the room, and with the image in the first GUI portion and/or the room shape in the second GUI portion optionally being updated to include visual indicators of such annotations or other descriptive information. The routine may further automatically determine one or more measurements for the room via image analysis and/or receive user input regarding such measurements, such as to use a user-defined door width and/or floor-to-ceiling height to determine a scale to map a relative distance in the defined room shape or image to an actual corresponding distance in the room. After the various types of information for the room have been automatically determined and/or obtained, the defined room shape and additional determined and obtained information is stored for later use.

After block 530, the routine continues to block 535 to determine if there is another room (or another 360° spherical panorama image with an equirectangular projection for a room) for which to determine a room shape and additional related information, and if so returns to block 520. It will be appreciated that while various operations are discussed herein with respect to blocks 520-530 for determining and/or obtaining various types of information for a room, it will be appreciated that such operations made be performed in other orders in other embodiments, and that some such operations may not be performed in some embodiments.

If it is not determined in block 535 that there is another room for which to determine a room shape and additional related information for the room, or if it is not determined in block 515 that received instructions indicate to determine a room shape, the routine continues to block 580 to determine if the instructions received in block 505 (or subsequently) indicate to determine the position of an image in a room, and if so the routine continues to perform blocks 581-587 to do so, and otherwise continues to block 545. In block 581, the routine receives a selection (e.g., from an operator user of the MIGM system) of a room in the building and of an image taken in the room (e.g., a 360° spherical panorama image with an equirectangular projection, a perspective image with rectilinear lines, etc.), and proceeds to determine a position of the image in the room. In some embodiments, the routine may further perform automated operations to identify a candidate position of the image (such as a likely position from image analysis and using machine learning techniques), and then use that information to guide the image position determination. The routine proceeds in block 581 to display a GUI (or update a previously displayed GUI) to show the image in a sixth pane or other portion of the GUI (e.g., in a same or similar location to that of the first pane), while including a seventh pane or other seventh portion (e.g., in a same or similar location of the second pane) to show a visual representation of the room shape for the room with a visual indicator of the image position once it is determined.

In block 583, if the image is a perspective image rather than a 360° spherical panorama image with an equirectangular projection, the routine overlays the displayed image in the sixth GUI portion with two user-locatable visual horizontal indicators, and shows corresponding wall visual indicators in the room shape in the seventh GUI portion—if the image is a 360° spherical panorama image with an equirectangular projection, the routine instead proceeds to block 585. The routine further participates in a series of user interactions with the displayed GUI in block 583 to locate the visual horizontal indicators in horizontal locations along two walls within the room, such as the top or bottom of doors or windows, or the border between a wall and a ceiling or floor. The user also moves the corresponding wall visual indicators in the seventh GUI portion to show those walls on which the corresponding visual horizontal indicators in the sixth GUI portion indicate horizontal spaces. As the user manipulates the visual horizontal indicators in the sixth GUI portion and/or the wall visual indicators in the room shape in the seventh GUI portion, the information in both GUI portions is updated to reflect the user manipulations (e.g., simultaneously with the user manipulations) and show the user changes that are made. The image and the specified horizontal visual indicators are then further analyzed to determine the height of the camera within the room when the image was taken, such as based on the angle between horizontal visual indicators on two adjacent walls.

After block 583 (or after block 581 if the image is a 360° spherical panorama image with an equirectangular projection), the routine in block 585 overlays the displayed image in the sixth GUI portion with three user-locatable visual vertical indicators, and shows corresponding dot location visual indicators in the room shape in the seventh GUI portion. The routine further participates in a series of user interactions with the displayed GUI in block 585 to locate the visual vertical indicators in three vertical locations along one or more walls within the room that are also visually identifiable in the room shape in the seventh GUI portion, such as the sides of doors or windows, or the border between adjacent walls. The user also moves the corresponding location visual indicators in the seventh GUI portion to show the wall locations at which the corresponding visual vertical indicators in the sixth GUI portion are located. As the user manipulates the visual vertical indicators in the sixth GUI portion and/or the location visual indicators in the room shape in the seventh GUI portion, the information in both GUI portions is updated to reflect the user manipulations (e.g., simultaneously with the user manipulations) and show the user changes that are made. The image and the specified vertical visual indicators are then further analyzed to triangulate the location of the camera within the room when the image was taken, such as based on the distance in the image between vertical visual indicators relative to their locations on the walls of the room shape.

After the image location is determined (and the camera height for perspective images), a corresponding visual indicator is added to the room shape at the determined location to represent the image, and an indication of the image is associated with and linked to the visual indicator for later use. After block 585, the routine continues to block 585 to determine if there is another image position to determine, and if so returns to block 581. It will be appreciated that while various operations are discussed herein with respect to blocks 581-585 for determining image position information, it will be appreciated that such operations made be performed in other orders in other embodiments, and that some such operations may not be performed in some embodiments.

If it is not determined in block 587 that there is another image to position, or if it is not determined in block 580 that received instructions indicate to position an image, the routine continues to block 545 to determine if the instructions received in block 505 (or subsequently) indicate to combine room shapes of multiple indicated rooms in a building to determine their relative layout, and if so the routine continues to perform blocks 550-565 to do so, and otherwise continues to block 588. In block 550, the routine receives a first selection (e.g., from an operator user of the MIGM system) of a first 360° spherical panorama image with an equirectangular projection taken in a first room of the building and a second selection (e.g., from the operator user of the MIGM system) of a second 360° spherical panorama image with an equirectangular projection taken in a second room of the building, and/or first and second selections of the first room of the building and the second room of the building, and proceeds to use the first and second panorama images to define relative layouts of the first and second rooms based on one or more inter-room passages between the first and second rooms. In some embodiments, the routine may further perform automated operations to identify candidate locations of each inter-room passage between the first and second rooms in both of the first and second images (such as likely locations from image analysis and using machine learning techniques), and then uses that information to guide the layout determination of the room shapes for the first and second rooms. The routine further proceeds in block 550 to display a GUI (or update a previously displayed GUI) to show the first panorama image in a third pane or other third portion of the GUI (e.g., in the same or similar location at which the first GUI portion was previously displayed) and to show the second panorama image in a fourth pane or other fourth portion of the GUI, while including a fifth pane or other fifth portion of the GUI (e.g., in the same or similar location at which the second GUI portion was previously displayed) to show a visual representation of the changing relative locations of the first and second room shapes. The routine further overlays the displayed first image with a user-manipulatable first visual inter-room passage representation and overlays the displayed second image with a user-manipulatable second visual inter-room passage representation, and in embodiments in which candidate inter-room passage locations were automatically determined, may use an initial position of the first and second visual passage representations in the first and second images, respectively, to be at those determined candidate locations for the first and second images (or allow the user to manually indicate to snap one or both of the visual passage representations to their corresponding determined candidate location if so desired). In one or both of the first and second images, the routine may further in some embodiments overlay a visual room border representation of the other room, such that a difference between room border representations for the first and second rooms in one of the first and second images may reflect a width of the wall between the first and second rooms.

After block 550, the routine continues to block 555 to participate in a series of user interactions with the displayed GUI to define an estimate of the relative layouts of the room shapes for the first and second rooms, with the user manipulating the visual passage representations overlaid on the first and second panorama images in the third and fourth GUI portions, respectively, to match the inter-room passages between the first and second rooms that are visible in the first and second images, and/or the user manipulating the relative room shape layouts in the fifth portion of the GUI to reflect the layouts of the room shapes for the first and second rooms. As the user manipulates one or more of the visual passage representations in the third and/or fourth GUI portions, and/or the layout of the room shapes in the fifth GUI portion, the information in the third, fourth and fifth GUI portions (e.g., the visual passage representations in the third and fourth GUI portions and the visual layouts of the room shapes in the fifth GUI portion) is updated to reflect the user manipulations (e.g., simultaneously with the user manipulations) and show the user changes that are made. By connecting an inter-room passage between the first and second rooms, the location of the inter-room passage in the first room and the location of the inter-room passage are connected (e.g., are at the same location in the layout of the room shapes, minus any wall width between the room shapes). Similarly, if the first image is overlaid with visual room borders representing the second room (e.g., visible through the inter-room passage in the first image) and the second image is overlaid with visual room borders representing the first room (e.g., visible through the inter-room passage in the second image), the visual layouts of the room shapes in the fifth GUI portion may be updated to reflect additional user manipulations to further specify a location of those visual room borders (e.g., simultaneously with the user manipulations) and show the user changes that are made, such as to specify the width of the walls corresponding to the locations of those visual room borders. Once the user is done with the user manipulations for the first and second rooms, the final layouts of the room shapes for the first and second rooms in the fifth GUI portion provides a user-defined estimate of the layout of the room shapes.

The routine in block 560 then optionally applies one or more automated optimizations to the alignment of the room shape layout for the first and second rooms, such as to reflect the determined thickness of a wall between the rooms, and if so the resulting room shape layout in the fifth GUI portion for the first and second rooms will be stored for later use—if such an optimization is not performed at that time, the results of the room shape layout in the fifth GUI portion from block 555 will instead be stored for later use. It will be further appreciated that during later loops through blocks 550 and 555, the layouts of additional room shapes may be specified in an incremental manner to add on the previously specified layouts of at least the room shapes for the first and second rooms (and for other additional rooms as they are added), and the layout information for additional rooms may be further used to specify the relative layouts of the room shapes for all of those rooms. For example, if the room shape for a third room is subsequently added to the room layout combination for the first and second rooms, information about the third room may further assist in refining the relative layout of the first and second rooms, such as based on the shape of the third room (e.g., to prevent the room shapes of the first and second rooms from overlapping with the room shape of the third room). Similarly, if inter-room passages between the third room and the first room and between the third room and the second room exist, connecting those passages between those rooms will, when combined with the previously defined inter-room passage between the first and second rooms, cause the overall room shape layout for the first and second and third rooms to be consistent with the locations of all of those inter-room passages. Thus, after block 560, the routine continues to block 565 to determine if there are other rooms to add to the layout of room shapes, and if so returns to block 550.

If there are not more rooms to add to the layout, the routine continues to block 570 to optionally perform a final optimization of the layout of all of the rooms to determine a final automated room layout—if the final optimization is not performed, the existing layout of the rooms from the last pass through blocks 550-560 may be used as the final automated room layout. In the illustrated embodiment, if stairs or other connecting passages between stories or other levels of the building were not specified, they may be further specified in block 570 in a manner similar to that discussed in blocks 550-560, such as to connect the floor maps for different stories or levels of the building. In addition, while not illustrated in routine 500, one or more MIGM system users may perform final touch-ups to the final automated room layout to product the final floor map to be used, such as to produce a consistent style (e.g., line widths, colors, text styles, etc.), to add textual room labels if not previously specified and/or to place the textual room labels at preferred locations on the final floor map, to add missing spaces such as small closets, to correct any geometric anomalies, to modify locations of images and/or other associated and linked information, etc. It will be appreciated that while various operations are discussed herein with respect to blocks 550-570 for determining room shape layouts for a building, it will be appreciated that such operations made be performed in other orders in other embodiments, and that some such operations may not be performed in some embodiments.

After block 570, or if it is not determined in block 545 that received instructions indicate to determine room layout information for two or more rooms, the routine continues to block 588 to store and/or otherwise use the generated floor map information and optionally other generated information, such as to provide the generated information for display on one or more client devices, provide that generated information to one or more other devices for use in automating navigation of those devices and/or associated vehicles or other entities, etc. The generated floor map may include, for example, relative position and shape information for the various rooms without providing any actual dimension information for the individual rooms or building as a whole, and may further include multiple linked or associated sub-maps (e.g., to reflect different stories, levels, sections, etc.) of the building—it will be appreciated that if sufficiently detailed dimension information is obtained (e.g., as discussed with respect to block 530), a floor plan may be generated from the floor map that includes dimension information for the rooms and the overall building. While not illustrated in routine 500, in other embodiments the routine may generate other types of mapping information for the building, whether instead of or in addition to a 2D schematic floor map as discussed for this example embodiment of routine 500—non-exclusive examples of other mapping information include a 2.5D texture map in which 360° spherical panorama images can optionally be re-projected on the geometry of the displayed texture map, a 3D structure that illustrates accurate height information as well as width and length (and in which 360° spherical panorama images can optionally be re-projected on the geometry of the displayed 3D structure), etc. In addition, in some embodiments additional information may be generated and used, such as to determine a geographical alignment (e.g., with respect to true north or magnetic north) and/or geographical location (e.g., with respect to latitude and longitude, or GPS coordinates) for the building and corresponding parts of the generated floor map, and to optionally further align with other external information (e.g., satellite or other external images, including street-level images to provide a ‘street view’ of the building; neighborhood information, such as nearby street maps and/or points of interest; etc.). Other information about the building may also be retrieved from, for example, one or more external sources (e.g., online databases, ‘crowd-sourced’ information provided by one or more end users, etc.), and associated with and linked to the floor map and/or particular locations within the floor map—such additional information may further include, for example, exterior dimensions and/or shape of the building, additional images and/or annotation information acquired corresponding to particular locations within the building (optionally for locations different from viewing locations of the acquired panorama or other images), etc.

If it is instead determined in block 510 that the information or instructions received in block 505 are not to generate a floor map for an indicated building, the routine continues instead to block 590 to perform one or more other indicated operations as appropriate. Such other operations may include, for example, receiving and responding to requests for previously generated floor maps and/or other generated information (e.g., requests for such information for display on one or more client devices and/or to provide to one or more other devices for use in automated navigation), obtaining and storing information about buildings for use in later floor map generation operations (e.g., information about exterior images, dimensions, numbers or types of rooms, total square footage, etc.), etc.

After blocks 588 or 590, the routine continues to block 595 to determine whether to continue, such as until an explicit indication to terminate is received. If it is determined to continue, the routine returns to block 505 to wait for and receive additional instructions or information, and otherwise continues to block 599 and ends.

FIG. 6 illustrates an example embodiment of a flow diagram for a Building Map Viewer system routine 600. The routine may be performed by, for example, execution of a map viewer client computing device 175 and its software system(s) (not shown) of FIG. 1A, a client computing device 390 of FIG. 3, and/or a mapping information viewer or presentation system as described elsewhere herein, such as to receive and display mapping information (e.g., a floor map, whether 2D, 3D, 2.5D or other format) for a defined area, including to display images (e.g., 360° spherical panorama images) and/or other information associated with particular locations in the mapping information. In the example of FIG. 6, the presented mapping information is based on a floor map of a building (such as a house) that may optionally have additional associated linked information (e.g., images taken within the building, sounds recorded within the building, annotations or other descriptive information associated with particular locations within the building, etc.), but in other embodiments, other types of mapping information may be presented for other types of buildings or environments and used in other manners, as discussed elsewhere herein.

The illustrated embodiment of the routine begins at block 605, where instructions or information are received. At block 610, the routine determines whether the received instructions or information indicate to display or otherwise present information representing a building interior, and if not continues to block 690. Otherwise, the routine proceeds to block 612 to retrieve a floor map for the building and optionally indications of associated linked information for the floor map and/or a surrounding location, and selects an initial view of the retrieved information (e.g., a view of the floor map). In block 615, the routine then displays or otherwise presents the current view of the retrieved information, and waits in block 617 for a user selection. After a user selection in block 617, if it is determined in block 620 that the user selection corresponds to the current location (e.g., to change the current view), the routine continues to block 622 to update the current view in accordance with the user selection, and then returns to block 615 to update the displayed or otherwise presented information accordingly. The user selection and corresponding updating of the current view may include, for example, displaying or otherwise presenting a piece of associated linked information that the user selects (e.g., a particular image), changing how the current view is displayed (e.g., zooming in or out, rotating information if appropriate, selecting a new portion of the current view to be displayed or otherwise presented that was not previously visible, etc.).

If it is instead determined in block 610 that the instructions or other information recited in block 605 are not to present information representing a building interior, the routine continues instead to block 690 to perform any other indicated operations as appropriate, such as any housekeeping tasks, to configure parameters to be used in various operations of the system (e.g., based at least in part on information specified by a user of the system, such as a user of a mobile device who captures one or more building interiors, an operator user of the MIGM system, etc.), to obtain and store other information about users of the system, to respond to requests for generated and stored information, etc.

Following block 690, or if it is determined in block 620 that the user selection does not correspond to the current location, the routine proceeds to block 695 to determine whether to continue, such as until an explicit indication to terminate is received, or instead only if an explicit indication to continue is received. If it is determined to continue (e.g., if the user made a selection in block 617 related to a new location to present), the routine returns to block 605 to await additional instructions or information (or to continue on to block 612 if the user made a selection in block 617 related to a new location to present), and if not proceeds to step 699 and ends.

Aspects of the present disclosure are described herein with reference to flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams of methods, apparatus (systems), and computer program products according to embodiments of the present disclosure. It will be appreciated that each block of the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, and combinations of blocks in the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, can be implemented by computer readable program instructions. It will be further appreciated that in some implementations the functionality provided by the routines discussed above may be provided in alternative ways, such as being split among more routines or consolidated into fewer routines. Similarly, in some implementations illustrated routines may provide more or less functionality than is described, such as when other illustrated routines instead lack or include such functionality respectively, or when the amount of functionality that is provided is altered. In addition, while various operations may be illustrated as being performed in a particular manner (e.g., in serial or in parallel, or synchronous or asynchronous) and/or in a particular order, in other implementations the operations may be performed in other orders and in other manners. Any data structures discussed above may also be structured in different manners, such as by having a single data structure split into multiple data structures and/or by having multiple data structures consolidated into a single data structure. Similarly, in some implementations illustrated data structures may store more or less information than is described, such as when other illustrated data structures instead lack or include such information respectively, or when the amount or types of information that is stored is altered.

From the foregoing it will be appreciated that, although specific embodiments have been described herein for purposes of illustration, various modifications may be made without deviating from the spirit and scope of the invention. Accordingly, the invention is not limited except as by corresponding claims and the elements recited by those claims. In addition, while certain aspects of the invention may be presented in certain claim forms at certain times, the inventors contemplate the various aspects of the invention in any available claim form. For example, while only some aspects of the invention may be recited as being embodied in a computer-readable medium at particular times, other aspects may likewise be so embodied. 

What is claimed is:
 1. A computer-implemented method comprising: obtaining, by a server computing device, and for a house with multiple rooms, information about a plurality of images taken at a plurality of viewing locations within the multiple rooms, wherein the plurality of images include a spherical panorama image for each room that displays walls of the room and at least some of a floor and ceiling of the room using 360 degrees of horizontal coverage around a vertical axis and that has rectilinear visual representations for data vertically and non-rectilinear visual representations for data horizontally; obtaining, by a client computing device via a graphical user interface (GUI) displayed to a user of the client computing device, and for each of the multiple rooms, a user definition of a room shape for the room, by: displaying, after transmission of the spherical panorama image for the room from the server computing device, and in a first image pane of the GUI, the spherical panorama image with overlaid visual border lines to represent borders between the walls and ceiling and floor in the room; displaying, in a visual shape pane of the GUI that is separate from the first image pane, a shape for the room that matches the visual border lines displayed in the first image pane; and updating the shape displayed in the visual shape pane simultaneously with manipulations by the user to the visual border lines displayed in the first image pane, until the user is finished matching the visual border lines displayed in the first image pane to borders visible in the displayed spherical panorama image, and then selecting the updated shape displayed in the visual shape pane as the room shape for the room; obtaining, by the client computing device via the GUI displayed to the user on the client computing device, and using multiple room combinations that each includes two adjacent rooms and that aggregately include all of the multiple rooms, a defined relative layout of the two adjacent rooms for the room combination by, for each of the multiple room combinations: displaying, in the first image pane of the GUI, the spherical panorama image for a first room of the two adjacent rooms, and a first visual representation overlaid on that spherical panorama image to represent an inter-room human passage in the first room for moving between the first room and a second room of the two adjacent rooms; displaying, in a second image pane of the GUI, the spherical panorama image for the second room, and a second visual representation overlaid on that spherical panorama image to represent the inter-room human passage in the second room; displaying, in the visual shape pane of the GUI, the room shape for the first room and the room shape for the second room and visual indications of the first and second visual representations; and updating, by the client computing device, locations of the displayed room shapes for the first and second rooms in the visual shape pane as the user manipulates the first and second visual representations in the first and second visual image panes to identify locations in the first and second rooms of the inter-room human passage, until the user is finished identifying the locations in the first and second rooms and the room shapes for the first and second rooms in the visual shape pane are located to connect the first and second visual representations, and selecting the updated locations of the displayed room shapes for the first and second rooms in the visual shape pane as the defined relative layout of the two adjacent rooms; generating, by the server computing device, and using the room shapes for the multiple rooms and the defined relative layouts for the room combinations, a floor map of the house, including to determine relative sizes and positions of each of the multiple rooms relative to other of the multiple rooms; and presenting, by the server computing device, the generated floor map of the house to one or more additional users using one or more additional devices, for use by the additional users in touring the multiple rooms of the house.
 2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein the obtaining of the user definition of the room shape for one of the multiple rooms further includes, in response to one or more additional manipulations by the user of the shape of the one room that is displayed in the visual shape pane, simultaneously updating the visual border lines overlaid in the first image pane on the spherical panorama image for the one room, and wherein the obtaining of the defined relative layout for one of the room combinations having first and second rooms further includes, in response to one or more further manipulations by the user of at least one room shape that is displayed in the visual shape pane for the first or second rooms of the room combination, simultaneously updating at least one of the first visual representation of the inter-room human passage overlaid in the first image pane on the spherical panorama image for the first room or the second visual representation of the inter-room human passage overlaid in the second image pane on the spherical panorama image for the second room.
 3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein the presenting of the generated floor map to one of the additional users further includes: receiving, by a computing device of the one additional user, the generated floor map from the server computing device, and displaying the received generated floor map to the user on the computing device, wherein the displayed floor map includes first visual indications of built-in elements of the house, and further includes second visual indications of measurements for at least some of the multiple rooms, and further includes third visual indications representing images taken within the house at locations corresponding to the third visual indications, and further includes fourth visual indications representing audio data recorded within the house at locations corresponding to the fourth visual indications; displaying, by the computing device to the user, and in response to user selection of one of the third visual indications displayed on the floor map, an image associated with the one third visual indication; and presenting, by the computing device to the user, and in response to user selection of one of the fourth visual indications displayed on the floor map, audio data associated with the one fourth visual indication.
 4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein the obtaining of the information about the plurality of images further includes: capturing, by a recording device, and at each of the plurality of viewing locations, at least one of the plurality of images; gathering, by the recording device and using one or more sensors, and as the recording device is moved between viewing locations, additional information above movement of the recording device; producing, for each of the multiple rooms, the spherical panorama image for the room from one or more of the captured images and using a format based on an equirectangular projection; and providing the produced spherical panorama images and the gathered additional information to the server computing device.
 5. A computer-implemented method comprising: obtaining, by one or more computing devices, a plurality of images taken at a plurality of viewing locations within multiple rooms of a building, including an image for each room that is from a spherical camera in the room and that includes 360 degrees of horizontal coverage with rectilinear visual representations vertically and with non-rectilinear visual representations horizontally; presenting, by the one or more computing devices via a displayed graphical user interface (GUI), and for each of the multiple rooms, the image for that room to obtain a user-defined room shape for that room and inter-room passage data for that room, including displaying visual border representations and receiving input from one or more users that manipulates the displayed visual border representations to identify borders in that room between walls and a ceiling and between walls and a floor, and including displaying a visual inter-room passage representation and receiving input from the one or more users that manipulates the displayed visual inter-room passage representation to identify a human-passable opening in the walls of that room; presenting, by the one or more computing devices via the displayed GUI, and for each of one or more room combinations each having two or more rooms of the multiple rooms, at least two images for the two or more rooms in the room combination to obtain a user-defined layout of the user-defined room shapes for at least those two or more rooms, including displaying the identified human-passable openings in the walls of the two or more rooms and receiving input from the one or more users to connect at least two of the identified human-passable openings in at least two rooms of the room combination as being part of a same passage between the at least two rooms; generating, by the one or more computing devices, a building floor map using the user-defined room shapes for the multiple rooms and the user-defined layouts for the one or more room combinations, including to determine sizes and locations and orientations of the multiple rooms in relationship to each other; and presenting, by the one or more computing devices, the generated building floor map to one or more additional users.
 6. The computer-implemented method of claim 5 wherein the GUI includes multiple panes that each display separate information, wherein the presenting of the image for a room to obtain a user-defined room shape and inter-room passage data for that room includes displaying the image in a first pane of the multiple panes in a format using an equirectangular projection and displaying visual border representations in the first pane overlaid on the displayed image, and further includes simultaneously displaying a room shape for that room in a second pane of the multiple panes, and wherein the displayed room shape and the displayed visual border representations correspond to each other such that user modifications to either the displayed room shape or the displayed visual border representations causes corresponding updated displays for the other of the displayed room shape and the displayed visual border representations.
 7. The computer-implemented method of claim 5 wherein the GUI includes multiple panes that each display separate information, wherein the presenting of the at least two images to obtain the user-defined layout of the defined room shapes for at least two rooms in a room combination includes displaying, in a first pane of the multiple panes and in a format using an equirectangular projection, a first image of the at least two images for a first room and displaying one or more first visual human-passable opening representations in the first pane overlaid on the displayed first image, and further includes simultaneously displaying, in a second pane of the multiple panes and in the format using the equirectangular projection, a second image of the at least two images for a second room and displaying one or more second visual human-passable opening representations in the second pane overlaid on the displayed second image, and further includes simultaneously displaying a room shape for each of the first and second rooms in a third pane of the multiple panes, and wherein the displayed room shapes for the first and second rooms correspond to the displayed first and second visual human-passable opening representations such that user modifications to the displayed room shapes for the first and second rooms or to the displayed first and second visual human-passable opening representations causes corresponding updated displays for corresponding information in one or more other panes.
 8. The computer-implemented method of claim 5 wherein the one or more computing devices perform further automated operations that include at least one of: analyzing, by the one or more computing devices and for each of the images for the multiple rooms, the image for the room to identify at least one of candidate corners in the room or candidate borders in the room, and wherein the presenting of the image for a room to obtain a user-defined room shape and inter-room passage data for that room includes enabling the one or more users to indicate to use the identified at least one of the candidate corners in the room or the candidate borders in the room to position the displayed visual border representations overlaid on the image for the room; or analyzing, by the one or more computing devices and for each of the images for the multiple rooms, the image for the room to identify one or more candidate openings in the room for at least one type of human-passable opening, and wherein the presenting of the image for a room to obtain a user-defined room shape and inter-room passage data for that room includes enabling the one or more users to indicate to use the identified one or more candidate openings to position the displayed visual inter-room passage representation overlaid on the image for the room; or analyzing, by the one or more computing devices and for each of the images for the multiple rooms, the image for the room to identify one or more candidate windows in the room, and wherein the presenting of the image for a room to obtain a user-defined room shape and inter-room passage data for that room further includes displaying one or more visual windows representations and enabling the one or more users to indicate to use the identified one or more candidate windows to position the displayed visual window representations overlaid on the image for the room and receiving input from the one or more users that manipulates the displayed visual window representations to identify one or more windows in that room; or applying, by the one or more computing devices and for each of the multiple rooms, one or more shape constraints to the user-defined room shape for the room to modify the user-defined room shape to satisfy the one or more shape constraints, and wherein obtaining the user-defined layout of the defined room shapes for at least two or more rooms of a room combination includes displaying the modified user-defined room shapes for the at least two or more rooms and arranging the displayed modified user-defined room shapes to connect the at least two identified human-passable openings in the at least two rooms of the room combination; or applying, by the one or more computing devices and for each of the multiple rooms, one or more layout optimizations to the defined relative layouts for the room combinations as part of the generating of the floor map, to modify the defined relative layouts to satisfy the one or more layout optimizations.
 9. The computer-implemented method of claim 5 further comprising: determining, by the one or more computing devices, at least one distance measurement for at least one element in at least one of the plurality of images; determining, by the one or more computing devices, and using the determined at least one distance measurement and the user-defined room shapes, dimensions of each of the multiple rooms; generating, by the one or more computing devices, and using the determined dimensions of each of the multiple rooms and the generated building floor map, at least one of architectural drawings or engineering drawings of the building; and providing, by the one or more computing devices, the generated at least one of the architectural drawings or engineering drawings of the building, to enable structural modifications to the building.
 10. The computer-implemented method of claim 5 further comprising using, by the one or more computing devices, the generated floor map to further control navigation activities by an autonomous vehicle, including providing the generated floor map for use by the autonomous vehicle in moving between the multiple rooms of the building.
 11. The computer-implemented method of claim 5 wherein the presenting of the generated building floor map includes transmitting, by the one or more computing devices, the generated floor map to one or more client devices of the one or more additional users for display on the one or more client devices, to cause use of the displayed generated floor map of the building for navigating the building.
 12. The computer-implemented method of claim 5 wherein the one or more computing devices perform further automated operations to obtain information from the one or more users for each of one or more rooms of the multiple rooms that includes at least one of: a textual label for the room; or one or more fixtures in the room; or one or more appliances in the room; or one or more built-in elements in the room; or one or more dimensions for the room; or one or more indications of one or more objects in the room having one or more defined dimensions; or one or more indications of one or more audio recordings to be associated with one or more locations in the room; or one or more indications of one or more textual descriptions to be associated with at least one location in the room; or one or more indications of one or more images to be associated with one or more locations in the room; or a geographical orientation of one or more elements in the room, and wherein the generating of the floor map includes adding visual indications to the one or more rooms in the floor map that correspond to the obtained information, and wherein the presenting of the generated building floor map includes presenting the added visual indications in the one or more rooms of the floor map.
 13. The computer-implemented method of claim 12 wherein the obtained information includes at least one of an image associated with a first location in one of the rooms or an audio recording associated with a second location in one of the rooms, and wherein the presenting of the generated building floor map further includes: presenting, by the one or more computing devices, at least one of a first user-selectable visual indicator on the presented floor map at the first location to represent the image associated with the first location or a second user-selectable visual indicator on the presented floor map at the second location to represent the audio recording associated with the second location; receiving, by the one or more computing devices, a selection by one of the additional users of the first or second user-selectable visual indicator on the presented floor map; and presenting, by the one or more computing devices and to the one additional user, the image associated with the first location if the selection by the one user is of the first user-selectable visual indicator on the presented floor map, or the audio recording associated with the second location if the selection by the one user is of the second user-selectable visual indicator on the presented floor map.
 14. The computer-implemented method of claim 5 wherein the generated building floor map is a two-dimensional map that does not include building height information, wherein the method further comprises obtaining, by the one or more computing devices, height information for at least one room of the multiple rooms, wherein the generating of the building floor map further includes generating, by the one or more computing devices, a three-dimensional model of the building that is based at least in part on the two-dimensional map and on the height information, and wherein the presenting of the generated building floor map to the one or more additional users further includes displaying, by the one or more computing devices, a visual rendering of the three-dimensional model to one of the additional users that includes visual information for height.
 15. The computer-implemented method of claim 5 wherein the generated building floor map is two-dimensional, and wherein the presenting of the generated building floor map to the one or more additional users further includes displaying, by the one or more computing devices, a visual rendering of the generated building floor map that includes visual representations of walls, and displaying, for each of one or more of the multiple rooms, at least some of the image for the room on visual representations of the walls of the room.
 16. The computer-implemented method of claim 5 wherein the building further includes one or more additional areas that are separate from the multiple rooms, and wherein the generating of the building floor map further includes analyzing, by the one or more computing devices, information about the building that includes the user-defined layouts to identify the one or more additional areas, and representing the one or more additional areas on the generated building floor map.
 17. The computer-implemented method of claim 5 wherein one or more rooms of the multiple rooms each has multiple images taken within the room that are each a spherical panorama image in a format using an equirectangular projection, and wherein the method further comprises determining, by the one or more computing devices and for each of the one or more rooms, a final user-defined room shape for the room by combining information received from the user about borders of the room from each of the multiple images taken within the room.
 18. The computer-implemented method of claim 5 further comprising, for each of one or more of the plurality of images, determining a position within the building at which the image is taken, adding a visual indication of the determined position to the generated building floor map, and displaying the visual indication on the presented building floor map, the determining of the position within the building at which each of the one or more images is taken including: presenting, by the one or more computing devices via the displayed GUI, the image and the user-defined room shape for a room in which the image was taken, including: displaying at least three visual vertical representations overlaid on the image; displaying, for each of the at least three visual vertical representations, a visual location indication on the user-defined room shape that is associated with the visual vertical representation; and if the image is in a perspective format, further displaying at least two visual horizontal representations overlaid on the image, and an associated visual wall indication on the user-defined room shape for each of the at least two visual horizontal representations; receiving, by the one or more computing devices, input from the one or more users via the displayed GUI to position each of the displayed at least three visual vertical representations at specified locations on the image and to position each visual location indication on the user-defined room shape at a location matching the specified location of its associated visual vertical representation; receiving, by the one or more computing devices and if the image is in a perspective format, further input from the one or more users via the displayed GUI to position each of the displayed at least two visual horizontal representations on specified walls in the image and to position each visual wall indication on the user-defined room shape at a location along a wall matching the specified wall of its associated visual horizontal representation; determining, by the one or more computing devices, and for a floor of the room in which the image was taken, a location on the floor at which the image was taken by analyzing the specified locations of the displayed at least three visual vertical representations; determining, by the one or more computing devices, a height from the floor at which the image was taken by: if the image is in a perspective format, analyzing an angle between the displayed at least two visual horizontal representations on the specified walls in the image; and if the image is in a perspective format, analyzing information in the image that includes an amount of curvature of horizontal data in the image; and selecting, by the one or more computing devices, the determined position within the building of the image based on the determined location on the floor of the room in which the image was taken and on the determined height from the floor.
 19. A non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored contents that cause one or more computing devices to perform automated operations that include at least: obtaining, by the one or more computing devices, a plurality of images taken at a plurality of viewing locations within multiple rooms of a building, including one or more images for each room that collectively include 360 degrees of horizontal coverage in the room with vertical rectilinear visual representations; obtaining, by the one or more computing devices, a defined room shape for each of the multiple rooms and locations of inter-room openings between rooms; presenting, by the one or more computing devices via a displayed graphical user interface (GUI) displayed to one or more users, and for each of two or more room combinations each having two or more rooms of the multiple rooms, at least two images for the two or more rooms in the room combination to obtain a user-defined layout of the defined room shapes for at least those two or more rooms, including displaying identified openings in walls of the two or more rooms and receiving input from the one or more users to connect at least two of the identified openings in at least two rooms of the room combination as being part of a same passage between the at least two rooms; generating, by the one or more computing devices, a building floor map using the defined room shapes for the multiple rooms and the user-defined layouts for the one or more room combinations; and providing, by the one or more computing devices, the generated building floor map for further use.
 20. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 19 wherein the obtaining of the defined room shape for each of the multiple rooms and the locations of inter-room openings between rooms further includes: presenting, by the one or more computing devices via the displayed GUI to the one or more users, and for each of the multiple rooms, the one or more images for that room to obtain a user-defined room shape for that room and inter-room passage data for that room, including to present, for each of at least one of the rooms, a single image for the room that includes 360 degrees of horizontal coverage and is shown with rectilinear visual representations vertically and with non-rectilinear visual representations horizontally, and including displaying visual border representations for each of the multiple rooms and receiving input from the one or more users that manipulates the displayed visual border representations for each room to identify borders in that room between at least one of walls and a ceiling, or walls and a floor, or multiple walls, and including displaying visual inter-room passage representations for each of the multiple rooms and receiving input from the one or more users that manipulates the displayed visual inter-room passage representations for each room to identify human-passable openings in and out of that room; and wherein the providing of the generated building floor map for further use includes presenting, by the one or more computing devices, the generated building floor map to one or more additional users on one or more additional computing devices.
 21. A system comprising: one or more hardware processors; and one or more memories with stored instructions that, when executed, cause the system to perform automated operations including at least: obtaining a plurality of images taken at a plurality of viewing locations within multiple rooms of a building, including one or more images for each room that collectively include 360 degrees of horizontal coverage in the room with vertical rectilinear visual representations; presenting, via a displayed graphical user interface (GUI) and for each of the multiple rooms, the one or more images for that room to obtain a user-defined room shape for that room and inter-room passage data for that room, including displaying visual border representations and receiving input from one or more users that manipulates the displayed visual border representations to identify borders in that room between at least one of walls and a ceiling, or walls and a floor, or multiple walls, and including displaying visual inter-room passage representations and receiving input from the one or more users that manipulates the displayed visual inter-room passage representations to identify openings in and out of that room; obtaining, for each of one or more room combinations each having two or more rooms of the multiple rooms, and using information about one or more identified openings between at least two rooms of the room combination, a defined layout of the user-defined room shapes for at least those two or more rooms that positions those user-defined room shapes relative to each other, including presenting, via the displayed GUI to the one or more users, and for each of the one or more room combinations, at least two images for two or more rooms in the room combination to obtain the defined layout of the user-defined room shapes for at least those two or more rooms, including displaying the identified openings in walls of the two or more rooms and receiving input from the one or more users to connect at least two of the identified openings in at least two rooms of the room combination as being part of a same passage between the at least two rooms; generating a building floor map using the user-defined room shapes for the multiple rooms and the defined layouts for the one or more room combinations; and providing the generated building floor map for further use.
 22. The system of claim 21 wherein the presenting of the one or more images for each of the multiple rooms includes presenting, for each of at least one of the rooms, a single image for the room that includes 360 degrees of horizontal coverage and is shown with rectilinear visual representations vertically and with non-rectilinear visual representations horizontally, wherein the input received from one or more users that manipulates the displayed visual border representations to identify borders in the at least one room includes manipulating displayed visual border representations for the at least one room to identify borders between multiple walls of the at least one room, and wherein the providing of the generated building floor map for further use includes presenting the generated building floor map to one or more additional users on one or more additional computing devices. 